Lewis County PUD 1 General Manager Chris Roden gives a presentation on the proposed 2020 budget, which was passed later in the meeting, in September 2019.
Lewis County PUD 1 is reminding residents to count on seeing an increase in their power bills starting next month, as a 4.75 percent rate increase begins Jan. 1 2020.
The Public Utility District’s board of commissioners approved the new rate structure earlier this month.
There will be no change to the daily fixed charge but the price per kilowatt-hour (kWh) will increase for all metered accounts.
“It’s going to be a 4.75 percent increase for energy only and the daily charge stays the same, so that works out to be roughly 3.6 percent increase on the total bill for a customer with average usage,” said PUD General Manager Chris Roden. “The biggest cost driver for us is the power and transmission costs.”
A requirement to purchase renewable energy is one factor in increased costs, Roden said. Initiative 937, passed in 2006, requires public utilities like Lewis County PUD to purchase steadily increasing amounts qualifying renewable energy such as solar and wind. Hydroelectric power is not considered a qualifying renewable source in compliance with I-937.
“We’re a utility that has a significant amount of hydroelectricity in our power portfolio. Our customers are served almost wholly by hydro,” said Roden.
Qualifying renewable sources are typically more expensive than hydropower.
“We’ve also seen an increase in our tree-trimming investment,” Roden said. “We are moving forward with capital replacements for aging assets so that’s transformers, poles, and wires.”
Roden said untrimmed trees can interfere with the power lines and that the tree-trimming and upgrades will mean providing better service to customers in the long run.
“That’s an investment in keeping costs down throughout the year. It also pays huge dividends to the customer in terms of reducing outages,” said Roden. “I don’t see the cost of energy going down in the near future, unfortunately. I think we find ourselves in an industry doing a lot more replacements and renewals of existing assets from the 50s and 60s,” said Roden.
More information is available at www.lcpud.org/.
