Snohomish County PUD customers will be seeing a 5.8% rate increase starting April 1.
The PUD Board of Commissioners agreed to the rate increase during its March 5 commission meeting.
After initially approving a 2024 electric budget in December that included a prospective 3.8% increase, the PUD said in a news release it decided to increase the amount after an extreme cold weather event in early January drove electricity market purchases higher than expected.
Rates for PUD residential electric customers will increase from the current plan of 9.6 cents per kilowatt-hour to 10.3 starting on April 1. The typical bill for a residential customer will increase by approximately $6 per month.
For PUD small business customers, the proposed rate increase will only affect their customer charge, resulting in an increase of approximately $10 per month to their bill.
The revenue adjustment is necessary to address increasing costs to critical equipment like transformers, wire and poles, labor and associated benefits, and escalating prices in the electricity market. During the cold snap in early January, due to constraints on the grid, electricity market prices climbed 800% over forecast and caused the PUD to spend an additional $40 million more than originally budgeted.
The additional revenue will also allow the PUD to continue to make crucial investments in infrastructure and technology that will increase reliability, meet growing customer electricity usage and improve customer experience, the utility said.
The PUD has a variety of tools to help customers who have trouble paying their electric bill or are behind on their payments, including payment arrangements and extensions. The PUD also has comprehensive income-qualified assistance programs that offer 25% and 50% bill deductions for qualifying customers.
Along with the rate increase April 1, the PUD will complete the final phase of its base charge implementation for its residential electric service rates. The base charge applies per meter and is based on the type of building that is served and the amperage rating of the customer’s primary fuse box or breaker panel.
For more information on PUD rates, visit snopud.com/rates.
Get used to these budget busting Utility increases. Remember it’s about saving the planet, and your grandchildren.
Did you read the article Brian?
Nothing about the planet or grandchildren.
Hyperbole again running rampant in comments.
But if you can prove a correlation between the article and your statement then go right ahead. I’m waiting.
It’s about constraints on the electrical grid. This will only get worse as we become more dependent on predictable limited production resources combined with increased demands. The local ratepayers are going to end up getting the short end of the stick. Even with all that “free government money” costs are way outpacing inflation. One brief winter cold snap increases the market price by 800% is objective example of poor energy management. Electrification is a nonsensical argument for saving the planet. Burying our grandchildren in debt to pay for these “green deals” in my opinion is abusive. Unfortunately arguing this Is like arguing with some fanatical religious nut that shows up at my front door. Best to smile and send them on their way.
That about sums it up
As a youngster I recall my dad, a pipefitter by trade, instsalling a natural gas burner on our furnace. It replaced the need to buy and burn coal. I recall how dirty our basement was due to coal and coal dust. The odor that burning coal produced. I do remember that my parents recieved financial help from some government agency to make the transition from coal to natural gas. Afterwards we were able to finish the basement and use it as a recreation area. I set up my American Flyer train set down there. The basement was much cleaner.
Since both parents have passed, I cannot ask they why they made the change. Was it due only to cost savings? Was it to maintain good health in the home? Was it to improve the environment of the city where we lived? Maybe they told my siblings and I, but I don’t remember.
Now, years later, again we are faced with the need to revamp the way we make heat, produce power. My parents changed and it helped us. I certainly can make changes to help my decendents.
We taxpayers spent hundreds of millions in the 90’s and after to convert the bus fleet to natural gas. The idea was that the emissions would be much cleaner than the old diesel buses. Here is a link about it:
https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19930122&slug=1681352
Now we are being hectored to abandon gas and convert everything to electric…home heating, cooking, gas fireplaces, cars, trucks, buses. I don’t think this will end well when the utilities have to continue raising rates year after year to provide more and more power and improve the grid.
When I was a kid, there were neighbors who who heated with coal. They were the last family that did so. I remember seeing a coal truck dump a load down a chute to their basement coal area.
My family heated with oil. That was in Philadelphia.
Out here, I don’t know whether there ever was a heat-your-home-with-oil time. I think that pretty much everyone out here heated with electricity or wood up until the 1990’s. Things do change.
Nick, currently well over 10,000 homes in the Puget Sound region are being heated by oil and have been for many years. I agree thanks do change, does that include your mind? Here’s just one company:
https://soundoil.com/
My neighbor in South Edmonds still heats with oil
Nuclear is the ONLY thing that can provide enough energy to replace fossil fuels and keep costs down. Not wind, not wave and at this time not solar. Nuclear!!!
When Wendy’s suggests ‘flexible demand-based pricing’, people lose their minds.
When a Utility Company suggests the same thing, for much of the same reasons, there is a mild shrug.
It’s the reality of scarcity.
GG,
After searching the PUD website the only reference I could find to your analogy is called a“Time of day” pilot program.
Were you just making a generalized statement?
If you actually know of a PUD residential demand based rate schedule please share a link or be a little more specific please as it would be beneficial to many readers.
Wait until they eliminate natural gas for heating and cooking. This will exponentially increase the demand for electricity and exponentially increase the price for electricity for everyone.
Learning of this and noting that as a whole, the electrical grid nationwide is tapped. With Shoreline/Lynnwood/Edmonds ( and the whole PNW, really ) adding thousands of apartments & ADU’s this will only get worse. We just saw an increase in our water/sewer/surface water bill due to the system needing upgrading. So now we have to electricity/water/sewer to 10-12,000 new apartments. Not good.
We have oil heat. Which seemed old-school to me when we bought our house and realized it was oil heat, but it works. Sound Oil’s Bioheat product is what we currently use. We keep the thermostat at 60 24/7 which keeps the price down.
https://soundoil.com/bioheat/
John, did you read the article you highlighted? Or did you just read the title? Yes, the transit authority spent $456 million on buses running on natural gas. They would have had to spend $380 million for the same buses running on diesel. So actually they spent $76 million more. According to the article this money also went to the infrastucture needed as well as for the buses. In the article experts said the new buses would not measurably improve air quality, Their reason for this position was because buses generated such a small amount to the air pollution in the metro area, not because there was no difference in the emissions.
For all the people inconvenienced by a change in their energy use, I can only say, “Enjoy living in the past waisting your money.” With solar panels, heat pumps, an induction stove, bettter insulation and new windows, I have the power company paying me for energy that I sell to them. The upfront costs for these improvements were significant. Like flat TVs, I believe prices will decrease as more people adapt to the new ways to generate and consume power.
I find it interesting how today’s solutions become tomorrow’s problems like a vicious unsolvable conundrum. We got rid of the electric interurban railroad between Everett and Tacoma because the automobile became so easy to own and move us directly to where we were going. A blessing to modern mankind. Now we are spending billions to essentially rebuild the interurban R.R. because the automobile is evil and polluting. We deforested where we live in the interest of making profits and creating living and farming spaces and now we are trying to figure out how to save trees and bring back the tree canopy. We invented highly efficient fish killing nets and techniques to tap a great food resource and now we are trying to figure out how to keep that resource from going extinct from over fishing and habitat abuse. We filled up our building lots with giant houses and now we are going to subdivide the open spaces that have survived to build affordable size houses for the masses. Our problems all solved with the use of more electricity? Probably just another human pipe dream I suspect.
Clinton you know pot is legal and for the most part many drugs are so when you say pipe dream I kind of think there is some truth to the statement, well done. I think government thought our growth has plateaued and government in its high mind came up with climate change to drive new industry development/growth which is what government has always strived for because that increases tax revenue guaranteeing the pyramid scheme or their jobs are never in jeopardy. Today people that rely on government funding for their livelihoods rivals the private sector. In my mind we are on the downhill side and future generations will pay the price and hope they get a government job.
Jim, you have some interesting theories but please don’t lump me in with people who are all anti-government and think government is either the cause of all our problems, or the solution to all our problems. Government does some good things, like Social Security, Medicare, and Obama Care and some bad things like never ending wars, genocide at times, and regressive taxation or what I call Socialism for the rich and Capitalism for the poor. Government is a mixed bag or a necessary evil to prevent the rule of the jungle and/or total chaos from taking over. Our government isn’t perfect but I sure as hell have no desire to go anywhere else to live and I refuse to live in fear of Trump or Biden or anyone else. Freedom is a choice and a state of mind. I love it here, warts and all. Currently there are just too many unhappy people with too many guns blazing, but time and attrition will solve lots of that I think. There is no climate crisis; just a too many human beings crisis.