Dive Brief:
- PPL Electric Utilities and consumer advocates have reached a settlement on the utility's proposed rate increase, meaning the average customer will see bills rise about $7.55/month.
- PPL annual revenues will increase about $124 million, but there will be no increase in the fixed-charge portion of residential customer bills.
- The utility will spend about $5 billion in the next five years to continue investing in smart grid technology, new power lines and substations.
Dive Insight:
PPL President Greg Dudkin called the agreement a "fair settlement," and said "we appreciate the constructive dialogue that enabled us to reach this agreement." If approved by Pennsylvania regulators, a residential customer using 1,000 kWh each month would see their bill increase from $147.31 to $154.86/month.
"We are in the midst of game-changing improvements in the quality of service for our customers," Dudkin said in a statement. The utility plans to spend $5 billion in the next five years to modernize and strengthen its grid.
If approved, the new rates would take effect on Jan. 1, 2016. But the utility said its investments are already paying off: customers now have 20% fewer outages than they did in 2007, and PPL said reliability is expected to improve by at least another 20 % in the next five years. Additionally, tree-related power outages are down 18% compared to the average of the previous 10 years.
Last month PPL said it had analyzed outage data over a four-year period to conclude its system reliability work had helped avoid almost 200,000 outages so far this year. Customers are seeing about 20% fewer outages as a result, and the company said reliability is expected to improve another 20% in the next five years