Citing rising expenses for fuel and hundreds of millions of dollars in investments to make electric service cleaner and more reliable, AmerenUE on Friday asked state regulators to boost electric rates by 12.1 percent, or $251 million a year.
The increase would raise the average monthly bill for residential customers by about $9 based on usage of 1,000 kilowatt hours.
Ameren said the rate increase is necessary to keep pace with rising costs and provide the cash needed to make huge investments in pollution controls at coal-fired power plants and for infrastructure improvements to make electric service more reliable.
“The main driver is fuel costs,” AmerenUE Chief Executive Thomas R. Voss said in an interview. “Almost all of the fuels — coal, natural gas, diesel, nuclear fuel — they’ve all risen considerably and they’re all more volatile than they were a few years ago.”
The PSC has 11 months to consider Ameren’s request. So, rates probably won’t change until sometime in early 2009 whatever the outcome.
The request to boost rates comes less than a year after AmerenUE’s last rate increase in May 2007. And it comes at a time when customers are coping with rising prices for gasoline, groceries and declining home values. And unlike Ameren, consumers can’t pass on the higher prices; they must absorb them.
“These are energy prices are something that people can’t do anything about,” said John Coffman , an attorney for Consumers Council of Missouri and the AARP. “You can’t choose another electric company because you don’t like the rates.”
Coffman hadn’t reviewed Ameren’s rate filing this morning in Jefferson City, but he expects a “careful review” by the Public Service Commission and consumer representatives in the coming months.
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