03/29/2024

PG&E customers face higher monthly bills during early 2018

PG&E customers can expect to ring in the New Year with a 2.8 percent hike in their monthly bills during the first two months of 2018, the utility giant proposed in a regulatory filing on Friday.

In the rate filing, PG&E asked that the state Public Utilities Commission defer an annual recalculation of monthly bills until March 1. Normally, the recalculation leads to the increase going into effect on Jan. 1. PG&E’s proposal would produce a 0.5 percent increase in January and a 2.3 percent jump in early March.

“An approval of this request will defer what is otherwise likely to be a rate increase to coincide with another planned rate change,” Erik Jacobson, PG&E’s director of regulatory relations, wrote in a letter to the PUC. “Greater stability in customer bills” would be the result of the deferral, Jacobson added.

At present, the average monthly residential PG&E bill is roughly $165.10 for customers who receive both electricity and gas services from the company. That’s much higher than monthly bills in the recent past.

“The monthly bill is a lot when you compare it to what it was just a few years ago,” said Mark Toney, executive director with The Utility Reform Network, a consumer group.

At the end of 2015, PG&E monthly bills averaged $137.66 for the average residential customer. By the end of 2016, that had risen to an average of $151.80, an increase of 10.3 percent in a year.

The current estimated monthly bill of $165.10 is 8.8 percent higher than a year ago.

All of these increases are running well ahead of the annual rates of inflation for the respective years.

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