The Saskatchewan Rate Review Panel has given the green light to SaskPower’s request for a rate increase. Now it’s up to the government to give the final stamp of approval. The report was delivered to the Minister responsible Tuesday.
The panel has recommended that the proposed 4 per cent rate increase effective September 1, 2022, be approved and that the proposed 4 per cent rate increase effective April 1, 2023, be approved pending a financial review submitted to the Panel no later than December 1, 2022.
As well the SRRP has recommended SaskPower’s proposal for rate rebalancing be approved. SaskPower is proposing to eliminate the existing differences in the basic monthly, energy and demand charges between urban and rural accounts for residential, general service, and small commercial customers. It is also proposing that the demand-related costs that are currently collected through the energy charge are slowly phased back to the demand charge. This will impact larger customers who are charged separately by demand and energy.
The panel noted some of the issues surrounding a request for a rate increase including SaskPower’s largest source of electrical generation is natural gas and the price has been on a steady climb upwards. As well there is the carbon tax and by the end of fiscal year 2023-24 the total carbon tax paid will be approximately $732 million and the panel says all of that will be paid by ratepayers.
The SRRP concluded that SaskPower needs the financial resources to provide safe and reliable electrical service in the face of new environmental policies and regulations imposed by the Government of Canada. And while customers have expressed their concern about the impact of continued rate increases on the people in the province, and businesses, the panel believes it is important to make sure that the situations in Europe with power interruptions and shortages of gas for home heating don’t happen in Saskatchewan.
So, if approved by government, when all is said and done, the typical residential customer who paid, with tax, approximately $133 at the beginning of April will see their bill increase to $140 per month as of September 1st. It will go up another $2 a month on January 1 next year because of the carbon tax and then in April of 2023 it will increase by another 4 per cent to approximately $147-per-month.
The panel wants SaskPower to prepare public versions of its business plan, integrated resource and depreciation study as part of any future applications to increase its rates.
And Monday, SaskEnergy announced it is requesting approval for a rate increase from the Saskatchewan Rate Review Panel. SaskEnergy’s rate proposal is a combined one-year commodity and three year delivery service rate proposal.
This means, if approved, the average SaskEnergy residential bill would increase $11.95 a month, or 16.8 per cent in the first year; $2.43 per month (2.9 per cent) in the second year and in year three an increase of $2.53 per month (3.0 per cent). The first increase, if approved, would go into effect on August 1, 2022.
