The Wisconsin Public Service Commission (PSC) greenlighted severe rate increases for Wisconsin Power & Light (WPL), pending a final decision by December.
If the proposed decision is approved, residential fixed charges will nearly double on Jan. 1, $7.67 to $15. Commercial businesses face even steeper increases, facing a fixed-charge increase from $7.67 to $17, a nearly 122-percent increase.
Initially, the utility asked for even steeper increases ($18 and $22, respectively) to be phased in over two years. The commission’s alternative would be implemented immediately and stay flat in the second year.
The proposed decision came under immediate fire from renewable-energy advocates.
“Wisconsin electricity customers now pay dramatically higher fixed charges than their counterparts in other states,” said Tyler Huebner, RENEW Wisconsin’s executive director. “Our testimony documented that the vast majority of state agencies nationally are either rejecting these fixed charge hikes outright, or granting much smaller increases, and only in Wisconsin are these fees being nearly doubled.”
RENEW supports a modified single-step increase to $12/month, which they say is more in line with increases across the region and within Alliant Energy’s service area. WPL is a subsidiary of Alliant.
Huebner’s point is valid. As pv magazine reported in August, 42 utilities in 25 states had requested fixed-charge increases in 2016 alone, by far the most popular type of rate increase requested. Despite its popularity, however, more than 50 percent of those increases were denied by state regulators.
Regulators expect to make a final decision by the end of the year.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.