Electricity rates can still go up in Snohomish County and Mill Creek, despite an announcement Monday that a key energy provider said it’s not going to ask as much for a rate hike this fall.
The Bonneville Power Administration now intends to increase prices by 5 percent, down from the 15 percent increase it announced this winter.
Even so, the news disappointed the county Public Utility District. “We expected (no) increase,” PUD commissioner Dave Aldrich said.
Bonneville provides the PUD with 80 percent of its electricity, generated mostly from dams.
The PUD was initially told that Bonneville would lower its rates by 10 percent this fall. But in February Bonneville said it would instead jack rates up 15 percent, blaming a $920 million budget shortfall on drought and a weak surplus power market.
Bonneville officials said they don’t expect the 5 percent hike to change once it’s adopted, although it can move up or down when a final decision is made at the end of the month, or during an August review.
With rates that are among the highest in the state, the PUD has been trying to find a way to lower or at least stabilize rates that have increased by 50 percent within the past two years.
“It’s likely that we’ll have to pass this on to (customers) if Bonneville doesn’t find a way to avoid this rate increase,” said Neil Neroutsos, PUD spokesman. “That’s the last thing we want to do.”
Bonneville officials were in an upbeat mood when they announced that their rate increase would be smaller than expected.
So was Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., who has been leaning on Bonneville to find a way to lower rates.
“I am encouraged by the progress that has been made so far,” Cantwell said in a statement, adding that there’s more work to be done. “I call on all of the stakeholders to work with BPA so that ratepayers will face no increase at all. If BPA can keep down its rates, workers in the Northwest can keep their jobs.”
Bonneville spokesman Ed Mosey said the rate hike was shrinking because the agency cut costs and heavy snow and rain in March beefed up water reserves behind the dams.
A rate increase may not be needed at all, Mosey said, if Snohomish PUD and a group of other public utilities would drop a lawsuit against Bonneville that claims the federal energy wholesaler is giving private energy companies too big a share of the energy it produces.
The 1980 Northwest Power Act requires that Puget Sound Energy of Bellevue and other privately-owned utilities in the Northwest get equal access to the low-priced energy BPA delivers to the region. Before 1980, all of BPA’s electricity went to public utilities such as the PUD.
The public utilities claim the newest contract Bonneville signed with the investor-owned utilities is far too generous.
Lukas Velush is a reporter with The Herald in Everett.
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