Entergy Mississippi will raise rates over the next six months in order to keep pace with the rising cost of natural gas, which produces 70% of the electricity generated by the utility.
Entergy officials said Thursday that rate increases will begin in November and continue through April to offset natural gas costs, which have doubled in the past year. The increase will be about $2 per month for customers using 1,000 kilowatt hours of electricity. At that rate of usage, bills will be about $12 more once the phase-in of rate hikes is completed in April, the utility said.
“We know this is tough news for our customers, as prices for nearly everything are rising, so we’ve worked hard to come up with a way to soften the impact,” Entergy Mississippi president and CEO Haley Fisackerly said. “If we didn’t phase-in these costs, the new rates would be fully in effect in November rather than April.”
Entergy said the U.S. Energy Information Agency is predicting natural gas bills will rise this winter. The utility said it expects its natural gas costs this year to be the most it’s paid going back to 2000, but its power rates will still be lower than the national average.
The utility sets fuel rates once a year, and this year’s rates weren’t as high as rising natural gas rates.
“All customer bills are going up as a result of these higher natural gas prices, but not as much as Entergy Mississippi’s actual costs incurred,” the company said in a statement.
The news comes five months after the Public Service Commission approved a $300 million settlement with Entergy that came as the result of prolonged litigation before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission related to “certain accounting and financing aspects of the Grand Gulf Nuclear Power Station.”
The PSC directed $200 million of the settlement to offset fuel costs to prevent steep rate increases from occurring in the future. The utility used another $35 million from the settlement to give customers an $80 credit in September.
