Chugach Electric Association, the newly formed monopoly resulting from the merger of the two Anchorage electric utilities, is seeking approval from the Regulatory Commission of Alaska to raise its base rates.
The electric utility has proposed an increase of nearly 6% for the majority of its customers, encompassing areas that includes more than 40% of the state’s population: Anchorage, Girdwood, Whittier, Hope, and Tyonek on the western shore of Cook Inlet.
The rate hike would be implemented in two steps. Starting from Sept. 1 of this year, customers would see a 3.6% increase, followed by the remaining 2.3% increase in September 2024.
This move may disappoint voters who voted for the purchase of Municipal Light & Power by Chugach in 2018, and who were promised stable power bills after the merger on Oct. 30, 2020.
Chugach Electric, which paid $1 billion for ML&P, has cited several cost drivers, including inflation, supply chain disruptions, declining electricity sales, and increased investment by consumers in energy-saving devices, as reasons for the rate increase. It has also said this rate increase is just a normal result of the merger.
For an average monthly bill of $100, this would result in an additional cost of about $6. Chugach Electric last raised its base rates in May 2020, when it implemented a 1.1% increase, blaming the Covid pandemic for the need for revenue.
The new proposal, just 36 months from the last increase, comes as a blow to customers who were led to believe that the merger would bring about efficiencies that would keep costs stable.
The increase in power bills by 6% adds to the also quickly rising price of rentals in Anchorage. As of June 2023, the average rent for a 1-bedroom apartment in Anchorageis $1,350, 35% increase over the previous year. Rent.com says a 2-bedroom apartment in Anchorage averages over $1,900, a 54% increase over the year before.
The decision to increase rates will trigger a 30-day comment period, providing an opportunity for the public to voice their opinions to the Regulatory Commission of Alaska.
COLA only went up 2 percent. Always somebody wanting your spare change.
Sounds like a bunch of made up BS to me. They should just come out and say the individuals at the top want more money in their paycheck.
Incrementalism. They aren’t the only ones doing it.
It’s all a bunch of Bravo Sierra! Rents up 54% over last year? Everything is up like crazy! Maybe the goal is to have us all out of this state. At this rate, no pun intended, many of us will be homeless. Not because of bad choices. Because of greed! If you are fortunate enough to have food shelter and warmth you should thank the lord above morning noon and night because at this point there is no telling how long any of us are going to be so blessed.
How much did Chugach Electric Association end up paying Hal Halpern the CEO that Chugach’s inept board of directors hired and then fired after he was on the job three weeks? That “dispute” in federal court, less than one year ago (July 2022), cost Chugach and by extension all of us A LOT.
Don’t let Miller and the board lie to you. Chugach’s demand for a rate increase is linked to Halpern’s termination, rather than the ones the current CEO Arthur Miller is “trotting out” now. Halpern’s annual salary was $499,00 with a bonus of $125,000.00 and moving expenses totaling $88,000.00.
Is this the same financial package that weak, inept, and unimpressive CEO Arthur Miller gets now?
Chugach and CEO Arthur Miller are exceptionally unethical. Miller is a 4th choice leftover after the Hal Halpern debacle. He caused the RCA to find Chugach guilty of “Unreasonable Management Practices”. The RCA basically found that Chugach doesn’t honor its legal commitments. How much did this cost us?
Here is the RCA link: ‘https://rca.alaska.gov/RCAWeb/ViewFile.aspx?id=1788f4ca-f058-442d-a454-dab1ead342dc
Did you expect otherwise? Ethan started the process of basically nationalizing everything not nailed down.
… Merging w/ ML&P
… Construction of new Power Plant in Midtown
… Buildout of Wind Turbines on Fire Island (that never seem to turn)
… Newly elected Liberal // Progressive Board Members
Does anyone see the irony, that they now want to electric raise rates?
Broken promises and poor decisions deserve harsh consequences and accountability!
I agree with all of that but CEA isn’t building the wind farm thats owned by a CIRI (look at the power purchase tab .https://www.chugachelectric.com/about-us/regulatory-affairs/fire-island-wind . CIRI Link :https://fireislandwind.com)
The ML&P merger was long past due. Properly done, it should have been a vehicle to cut operational overhead & rates. Rather, it ended up triggering a rate increase request because Chugach never was all that interested in cutting costs.
SPP was another project long past due. It replaced the very old and inefficient generation behind the Chugach HQ. It is natural gas and about the cleanest generation (outside of Bradley Lake / Cooper Lake) in the railbelt. And it will be around for a couple generations. Cheers –
I can’t believe that they are using the excuse of declining electricity sales as a reason to increase rates!! How can they explain that? People leaving the state? Not enough EV sales? Too many natural gas ranges being used? Come on man, give me a break!!
I am shocked they waited this long and asking for such a small increase.
After the discovery of the leftist democratic cesspool that is in charge of the operation I was fully expecting much more and sooner.
With Mark Begich’s Julie Hasquet as communications director hiring Bernie Posar “The Westchester Goon” and using Chugach Electric as a war room to carry out their attacks on conservatives its not rocket science to realize the cost of delivering electricity to customers is going to get REAL expensive.
As MA pointed out anything Ethan touched magicly turned to s**t.
I smelled a rat the instant He said it would be a good move for all …(except for the rate payers)
Hasquet and Posar are just the tip of the iceberg.
With that kind of work environment you can bet it is a hostile one for any conservatives to work there.
That leaves us with a bldg full of “Government employees” whos are there not to produce but to spend and collect.
I get a sick feeling in my stomach everytime I see a Chugach vehicle on the road wandering which conservative are they targeting and how much will it cost us next month. Pathetic leadership!
Conservative who? Please explain. There ain’t a damn one in this state. Look no further than our Governor and his goons whose top priority this last session was CARBON CREDITS!
Just more promises made and promises broken. Pure greed.
Power generation needs to be less woke. No more wasting resources trying to buy every niche generation method (wind, solar, unicorn farts). We’d be far better off if we just went back to coal without all the BS “clean air act” scrubbers and other things that make it less efficient in the name of combating “global warming”. Coal is cheap, plentiful in Alaska, and burns clean enough. We could be an energy powerhouse if we just used proven, simple, cheap technology.
If anyone is surprised by this then they haven’t been paying attention, which might just be the root cause of the issue.
Elections have consequences. Anchorage is living them.
A total monopoly. This is why these companies, in the name of climate change and keeping you from dying, want everything to be electric. These rates will continue to climb while our coal, oil, and natural gas get phased out and eventually abandoned.
They could care less about the environment or efficiency. It’s about reducing the amount of serfs (us) and controlling the rest.
It was advertised to those that get information from sources other that local talking heads and washed up ADN.
That the Chugach board member election would affect everyone’s electric bills. If I remember correctly. The results weren’t good for the ones that actually pay their own bills.
This is just the beginning
This is what we get for them installing Tesla Batteries in Soldotna! What a scam!
Wrong service area…see my comment above^ regarding paying attention.
That’s what you get for conserving! That’ll learn ya!
Just say no.
Suzanne, is Alaska really joining a lawsuit against the EPA because the new wood stove standards are not stringent enough? I read that those poor people in Fairbanks are not confident that their new EPA approved wood stoves will really cure pollution. Can’t have that, can we? Thanks Dunleavy.
I’ll have a story up this morning explaining it. – sd
A 6% increase is nothing compared to far larger increases over the next decade while CEA goes green. They even push electric vehicles, which proves the obvious: Nobody there has a clue.
A BEV already has a lower life cycle cost than ICE vehicle.
Prove it.
Frank, repeating a lie does not make it true.
Big picture. If you don’t volunteer to pay the electric bill of a transgender during their involuntary hospital stay you must pay the electric bill of 17 illegal alien families resettled in Anchorage by Catholic Social Services/ Lutheran Social Services.
Don’t complain. This is what you voted for Anchorage.
The Chugach Electric “Association” has taken the lead from the Anchorage School District. You lose customers (students), then raise the rates because you receive less money for fewer students. Heaven help us if Chugach and the ASD lose thousands more customers and students respectively.
MRAK has this fantasy that Alaska should have high oil prices to feed a PFD and low electrical rates. Nobody likes higher prices, if overall inflation is 19% over 3 years and housing is up 35% in three years, a 6% rate increase Is not excessive. CEA employees bills like everyone else.
Well, that didn’t take long. Note that nobody but nobody said anything about this during the recent campaign for the Chugach Board, won by the renewable greens and the Alaska Center for the Environment.
I am reminded of the HL Mencken quote: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
This is the first rate increase request from the new Board. it won’t be the last. I plan on sending in a comment to the RCA arguing against the rate increase. The rest of you should too. Cheers –
After achieving their monopoly, corporate Chugach has embraced an “it’s our way of the highway” philosophy. CEO Arthur Miller, the board of directors, Bettina Chastain, Mark Wiggin, Sam Cason, and Chugach subordinate workers don’t give a damn about “the members”. But they like their paychecks … the bigger the better.
For years, I have paid all of my recurring expenses using automatic credit card payments. Then in March, my credit card expired and I received a new one. I called Enstar, AWWU, GCI, AT&T, and USAA and easily provided them with the “new numbers”. When I called Chugach, however, a Chugach employee refused to take my new credit card numbers over the phone. She required instead that I create an online account and enter everything there OR I could provide the new credit card information in person. When I showed up during normal business hours, nobody was working in the customer service department. The security guard had no idea where everybody went or when they would be back. So, now I write monthly checks for electricity. Chugach is a monopoly and is unconcerned about its “members”.
Just wait until we are all charging our cars, fishing boats, buses, heating with electricity(wood stoves will be banned or assessed special carbon penalties), cooking electrically, using electric water heaters & natural gas banned as a means to generate power. And not only in Alaska but nationwide. There is only one way for the cost of electricity to go and that is UP. Way up. The more demand for a commodity the more expensive it gets. And if the power grid goes down, well, you’re SOL. So unless we generate massively increased amounts of electricity, well….
The sale of ML&P for a billion dollars was a fraud. The city of Anchorage needs to rebate Chugach electric so it can pay off the debt it incurred over paying to much for ML&P and we get the stable rates we were promised. But corruption is the name of the game these days.
Chugach rate increase “If you look at the consumer price index for urban Alaska, gasoline in six years has gone up 42%, dairy and others 28%, fruits and vegetable 27%, rent 13%,” Hasquet said.
Hasquet makes the point for us; those that are on fixed incomes are devastated by these continued expense increases. Being on a fixed income in retirement, I have been forced to cut back on everything we spend money on. 6% rate increase is out of line, their job was to minimize rate increases not go crazy. Born in Alaska 71 years we will be forced to leave, we need electric to power the lights, run the boiler. Waiting for Natural gas to go crazy too. Quit studying things to death build the natural gas pipeline to Cook Inlet. If there is a surplus sell it to offset the cost.
Renewable Energy Alaska Project
Renewable energy is a joke nation wide, it is far from being a realistic option. Wind is not constant, Solar in the summer but winter it would be hard pressed to light a light bulb. The only option would be geo thermal, where is that plant?
Chugach rate increase “If you look at the consumer price index for urban Alaska, gasoline in six years has gone up 42%, dairy and others 28%, fruits and vegetable 27%, rent 13%,” Hasquet said.
Hasquet makes the point for us; those that are on fixed incomes are devastated by these continued expense increases. Being on a fixed income in retirement, I have been forced to cut back on everything we spend money on. 6% rate increase is out of line, their job was to minimize rate increases not go crazy. Born in Alaska 71 years we will be forced to leave, we need electric to power the lights, run the boiler. Waiting for Natural gas to go crazy too. Quit studying things to death build the natural gas pipeline to Cook Inlet. If there is a surplus sell it to offset the cost.
Renewable Energy Alaska Project
Renewable energy is a joke nation wide, it is far from being a realistic option. Wind is not constant, Solar in the summer but winter it would be hard pressed to light a light bulb. The only option would be geo thermal, where is that plant?
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