Staff Reports
State utility regulators on Monday refused to let Duke Energy Florida add $4.70 to customers’ bills effective on July 1 to cover rising fuel costs.
The Florida Public Service Commission, which regulates investor-owned utilities, voted instead to make the utility wait until this fall to propose a fuel-cost adjustment. Any increase would begin to take effect July 1 next year.
That could mean a steeper increase next July 1, when a separate $4.25 rate increase, tied to the coming online of a new natural gas-fired generating plant in Citrus County, takes effect. The utility plans to retire one of its coal-burning generators.
The delay would allow a truer picture of Duke’s actual fuel costs for the year, the commissioners reasoned.
“(Duke) wanted to smooth it out, and the commission said, No, we’d rather just look at it all in the upcoming hearing in the fall, and see it there are offsets. And maybe we can look at your projections and see whether you are projecting something wrong,” Deputy Public Counsel Charles Rehwinkel said.
The commission’s staff had recommended approval of the “mid-course correction,” calling it “reasonable.”
Duke’s “most current” projection of its fuel costs for 2017 was projected to be $1.3 billion, an “under-recovery” of nearly 13.6 percent, its filing says.
2 comments
Dan
June 5, 2017 at 10:46 am
Duke has never repaid the 25% increase for a Nuclear Power Plant, they never had to build and never did. They are ahead by $4 Billion and counting. Duke customers pay 22% more for electric than any other electric company customers in the state of Florida. Repay the Billions and reduce the price by 25%, then give them the $6.
a bleeding old woman
June 6, 2017 at 9:04 am
I agree with Dan. Duke needs to pay back the 25% they stole… They also have put a cabosh on the solar panel companies and people putting panel on their homes, while building solar panel farms all over?????? the sun is free … they are producing electricity … the panels we have already paid for ( the 25% for the Nuclear Power Plant ) our rates should be going down!!! people are just getting by … very few jobs … retirees have to go back to work and this takes jobs away from the next generation….. CEO’s and stock holders how much money do you want ???? we are bleeding enough now…. the only response I want is that our legislators and our govenor stop this madness
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