Rates for on-peak electricity will increase by 4% in La Plata, Archuleta and San Juan counties on April 1, but the rate for off-peak usage will not increase.
The rate increase will affect electricity usage between the hours of 4 and 9 p.m., and the average residential users will see a monthly increase in their bills of about $4.80 a month, said Hillary Knox, LPEA vice president of communications.
LPEA estimates the rate increase will bring the monthly residential bill from $103.14 to $107.94.
“There is a way to lower the impact by switching usage to non-peak hours, but if the average residential user does everything the same, they will see about a $4.80-a-month increase, but if you shift to running your dryer or your dishwasher outside of peak hours, you can mitigate the impact,” Knox said.
Dan Harms, vice president of grid solutions, said the rate increase reflects the cost LPEA pays Tri-State Generation and Transmission, which charges more for on-peak electricity than off-peak use.
“Peak usage is an important thing for us to pay attention to, and if people shift use to off-peak usage, it will create a savings that we will be able to pass on to our members in the future. This aligns with our costs and expenses,” he said.
The electric cooperative has been trying since the 1990s to shift usage to off-peak hours, Knox said.
Bob Lynch, president of LPEA’s board of directors, said, “As a board, we voted to add a peak-power rate to assist LPEA in meeting our 2020 financial obligations and increasing our cooperative’s safety and reliability. It also allows for our members to have more choices in controlling their bills, giving them the flexibility to manage their energy during peak-power pricing.”
LPEA has 12 different classifications of customers, and the actual rate increase will vary for users from between 1.8% to 4.7% among the various classes.
The cooperative avoided adding the rate increase to the base charge or to the energy charge, but purposely focused on applying the rate charge to the peak hours to give users some method of minimizing the hit to their budgets, Knox said.
Harms said LPEA worked to improve its efficiencies before increasing rates. Technological improvements, such as increasing the use of remote-control operations for some work on the grid, have helped by limiting the need to send personnel for some repairs and maintenance. Also, more efficient tracking of glitches on the grid has helped keep costs down.
The last time the electric cooperative raised its rates was in 2016, and the current rate increase is expected to raise about $3 million in new revenue to cover increased operational costs, principally for equipment and salaries.
parmijo@durangoherald.com
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to note the last rate increase was in 2016. Also, rate increase percentages were corrected.
