Duke Energy Indiana seeking to raise electricity rates 16%
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Duke Energy Indiana, the state’s largest electric utility, is asking state regulators for permission to raise rates about 16% over two years.
The company filed a rate request Thursday with the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission in a move that would raise an extra $492 million a year.
If approved, the rate increase would be added to bills in two steps: approximately 12% in 2025 and about 4% in 2026, the Plainfield-based utility said.
The increase will vary among consumers depending on the cost to serve different types of customers, such as residential and business, the company said. It estimated the total monthly impact of the two steps for a residential customer using 1,000 kilowatt-hours a month would be about 19%, or $27.63.
The move comes about four years after Duke Energy had its last base rate increase of $146 million a year, or about 60% less than it originally sought.
The Indiana Office of Utility Consumer Counselor did not immediately respond to an IBJ request for comment.
Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana, a consumer advocacy group, said it was still reviewing the case, but said asking residential customers for an extra $28 a month while the company had strong financial performance was “unreasonable and immoral.”
The utility’s parent, Charlotte, North Carolina-based Duke Energy Corp., reported a profit of $2.87 billion last year, up 17% from a year earlier.
The Indiana operation said that since the last base rate increase in 2020, it has invested $1.6 billion in its electric grid, technology, power plants and overall system, which has helped prevent more than 185,000 power outages.
“We know that utility costs can be a major part of a household and business’s budget and that customers expect us to do our part to keep bills as low as possible,” said Stan Pinegar, president of the Indiana operations, in written remarks. “We have kept our day-to-day operating costs flat since 2020 while we make long-term investments to serve customers.”
He added: “Fortunately, fuel costs for our electricity production have declined, and residential customer bills are about 25% lower than they were in late 2022.”
The utility said it is adding state-of-the-art sensors to its Indiana power lines, which it compared to GPS in a car that can identify an accident ahead and reroute a driver around the incident. “The technology can quickly identify power outages and alternate energy pathways to restore service faster for customers when an outage occurs,” the company said.
Duke Energy added it is “hardening” its system against severe weather to reduce power outages, including changing wood poles to steel, undergrounding power lines in targeted, outage-prone areas, and rebuilding miles of overhead lines.
And in the wake of physical attacks to the electric grid nationally, Duke Energy said it is taking steps to improve physical security and protection at some of its key infrastructure delivering power to Indiana communities.
Environmental group the Sierra Club accused Duke of seeking the rate hike so it could “keep its massively polluting Gibson and Edwardsport coal-burning power plants open.”
“For over a decade, Duke has unfairly put the burden on customers’ pocketbooks to prop up its money-losing Edwardsport and Gibson plants,” Robyn Skuya-Boss, director of the Hoosier Chapter Sierra Club “Instead of investing in clean and affordable renewable energy, Duke energy chose to waste billions of our hard earned dollars. Regulators at the IURC can’t keep allowing Duke to put our money into polluting resources; we need to see investments in clean energy that benefit our communities.”
Duke Energy Indiana serves about 900,000 customers in 69 of Indiana’s 92 counties. The company said it expects to have more than 60,000 new residential and business customers by 2025 and is adding 345 miles of new power lines and infrastructure to serve them.