From February 10, 2023 post.
Two public hearings are scheduled for proposed changes to the natural gas rate ordinance by the Department of Public Utilities (DPU). The proposed changes don’t increase the fixed rates adopted last fall. Instead, they include an increase to the variable rate cap, an additional recovery rate component and a compensatory minimum value for the variable portion of the gas rate.
The first public hearing will be held at the regular monthly Board of Public Utilities (BPU) meeting on February 15 at 5:30 pm. If approved by BPU, a second public hearing will take place at the March 28 County Council meeting at 6:00 p.m. Both meetings are held in a hybrid fashion so the public may attend in person in Council Chambers or online via Zoom using the link ladpu.com/ratehearing. The ordinance changes must be adopted by the County Council before they can be put in place. If adopted, they will take effect in April 2023.
The proposed changes are in response to rapidly escalating commodity costs paid by the utility. DPU uses a pass-through gas rate, meaning customers pay a variable rate that changes monthly based on the actual costs paid by DPU to receive the commodity that is provided to customers. The variable rate has been in place since 2013 and did not reach the do-not-exceed variable rate cap of $0.99/therm until two years ago. It has now been reached five times.
Original source can be found here.
