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Duke Energy Indiana, the state’s largest electric utility, is asking state regulators for permission to raise rates about 16% over two years.
The company filed a rate request Thursday with the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission in a move that would raise an extra $492 million a year.
If approved, the rate increase would be added to bills in two steps: approximately 12% in 2025 and about 4% in 2026, the Plainfield-based utility said.
The increase will vary among consumers depending on the cost to serve different types of customers, such as residential and business, the company said. It estimated the total monthly impact of the two steps for a residential customer using 1,000 kilowatt-hours a month would be about 19%, or $27.63.
The move comes about four years after Duke Energy had its last base rate increase of $146 million a year, or about 60% less than it originally sought.
The Indiana Office of Utility Consumer said its technical staff and attorneys will be reviewing Duke Energy’s request over the next few months.
“We expect to file testimony based on our analysis on July 11,” spokeswoman Olivia Rivera told IBJ in an email. “In the meantime, we invite consumers to send written comments to us through July 5.”
Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana, a consumer advocacy group, said it was still reviewing the case, but said asking residential customers for an extra $28 a month while the company had strong financial performance was “unreasonable and immoral.”
The utility’s parent, Charlotte, North Carolina-based Duke Energy Corp., reported a profit of $2.87 billion last year, up 17% from a year earlier.
The Indiana operation said that since the last base rate increase in 2020, it has invested $1.6 billion in its electric grid, technology, power plants and overall system, which has helped prevent more than 185,000 power outages.
“We know that utility costs can be a major part of a household and business’s budget and that customers expect us to do our part to keep bills as low as possible,” said Stan Pinegar, president of the Indiana operations, in written remarks. “We have kept our day-to-day operating costs flat since 2020 while we make long-term investments to serve customers.”
He added: “Fortunately, fuel costs for our electricity production have declined, and residential customer bills are about 25% lower than they were in late 2022.”
The utility said it is adding state-of-the-art sensors to its Indiana power lines, which it compared to GPS in a car that can identify an accident ahead and reroute a driver around the incident. “The technology can quickly identify power outages and alternate energy pathways to restore service faster for customers when an outage occurs,” the company said.
Duke Energy added it is “hardening” its system against severe weather to reduce power outages, including changing wood poles to steel, undergrounding power lines in targeted, outage-prone areas, and rebuilding miles of overhead lines.
And in the wake of physical attacks to the electric grid nationally, Duke Energy said it is taking steps to improve physical security and protection at some of its key infrastructure delivering power to Indiana communities.
Environmental group the Sierra Club accused Duke of seeking the rate hike so it could “keep its massively polluting Gibson and Edwardsport coal-burning power plants open.”
“For over a decade, Duke has unfairly put the burden on customers’ pocketbooks to prop up its money-losing Edwardsport and Gibson plants,” Robyn Skuya-Boss, director of the Hoosier Chapter Sierra Club “Instead of investing in clean and affordable renewable energy, Duke energy chose to waste billions of our hard earned dollars. Regulators at the IURC can’t keep allowing Duke to put our money into polluting resources; we need to see investments in clean energy that benefit our communities.”
Duke Energy Indiana serves about 900,000 customers in 69 of Indiana’s 92 counties. The company said it expects to have more than 60,000 new residential and business customers by 2025 and is adding 345 miles of new power lines and infrastructure to serve them.
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Ridiculous
Greed and keeping up with the (AES) Joneses!
They admit fuel costs have come down for them, but they want to keep gouging consumers. Such BS.
As Obama famously said, “If somebody wants to build a coal-fired power plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them, . . . Under my plan … electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”
Biden is fulfilling his old boss’s plan. What utter stupidity.
If only we transitioned to the cleanest and most reliable form of energy on Earth: nuclear.
We’d be charged to build the Nuke, and with constant increases!
Well, yes let’s build nuclear generators. RIght after you figure out how to safely dispose of the spent rods, and by safely I mean for a few thousand years or longer. Unless someone comes up with safe recycling. And once we get that figured out, let’s make sure they are earthquake proof…and then let’s make them human screw up proof.
I think it significant that countries which adopted nuclear, such as Germany, France, England and Japan, are backing away as the dangers grow.
Of course power produced by other than coal is more expensive. Coal is cheap, very cheap, for power generation. But darn it, it just fills the air, and then fills your lungs…hundreds of miles downwind of the power plant.
But figure out the technical safety issues, and I’m all for nuclear power.
Tim,
Do some research, disposal and recycling are well-understood.
Nuclear by far is the safest form of energy on Earth.
Germany abandoned nuclear in favor of coal, one of the stupidest German decisions since invading Poland in 1939.
I hate to tell you this, but the big multinational banks are not/will not finance a coal powered projects. The only place where coal is still expanding are where the Government is providing the financing. China and India come to mind. So you can pay for dirty energy with higher rates or your tax dollars. Your choice.
They can have their rate increase if they allow net metering and micro-suppliers to be compensated properly…150% of retail for domestic solar? Or they can pay sales and Value add taxes on the coal & natural gas they’re burning at their powerplants—just saying that the state needs to get creative on telling Duke/AES/NIPSCO/and company to suck it and be quiet.
RIDICULOUS. Forcing lots of families to make decisions on whether to be cold or hungry. How are people supposed to survive with the state of our economy? Wake up and make smart choices in November.
Vote in some politicians that won’t coddle the utilities, like the current “anything for businesses” Republicans? I’ll go along with that!
They can suck their record profits. These fools are unreal.
Typical monopoly utility ask.
Rooftop solar payback has been decimated.
They want to keep building gas plants instead of doubling down on solar and storage.
The only thing that matters to Duke is their ROE, Return on Equity.
If they ran their grid efficiently, they would need 20% less power output to serve everyone.
As it stands, everyone should be bracing for outages this summer.
If you think I am kidding, look at MISO territory peak demand map.
The entire map is RED!
“Doubling down on solar and storage”
BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!
“Let’s figure out how to make our electricity prices increase 200%! Poor people aren’t poor enough!
2 major failures in 18,500 cumulative years of operation per the World Nuclear Association with 45 deaths associated with Chernboyl (poorly designed) and zero with Fukushima. That my friends is green and safe!
But how will the Democrat super donors get their returns on investments after bribing their favored politicians?
You forgot a little incident at Three Mile Island. While nobody died, there was a good threat of nuclear fall out very near a major metro area.
I looked on a map a few years back to see where Indianapolis might get into the plume of fall out from a nuclear plant, and I suspect if something bad happened, there’s nothing directly downwind so maybe we have about a 60/40 chance we wouldn’t end up in glowing in the dark..
Profits up 17% from last year and they want to increase costs for customers. Complete moral turpitude. How do these people sleep at night? Please vote No IURC. Please.