BEL CEO Lyn Young broke the bad news to consumers two weeks ago at the opening of the Chalillo dam and today his company made it official: BEL is asking the PUC to grant it a 13.8% increase. If the request is granted, the average light bill would go up by 5.4 cents per kilowatt hour. This is actually a greater increase than was granted after the full tariff review process in July. At that time, the average increase was 4 cents per kilowatt hour, which was an 11% increase.
But now the request is for just under 14% and when you add that to the General Sales Tax (GST) of 10% which, preliminary indications are, will be charged on most accounts by next year April you could be looking at a light bill that's 24% higher than it is now. Add that to the 11% July 2005 increase, and light bills would have gone up by more than 33% in less than a year. We stress "would" because at this point, 14% is just what BEL is applying for. The PUC will have to decide what BEL actually gets. BEL applied on Friday and at this point there's no indication when the PUC will respond.
And if you're wondering why a company with revenues of over $100 million would be applying for a cumulative 25% increase in rates in less than half a year, well, rising oil prices have depleted what's known as the rate stabilization account - which is a mechanism designed to protect consumers from spikes in energy costs associated with the rising price of gas. But those oil prices have risen so sharply and successively, that the rate stabilization account has been depleted, and BEL says it has been digging into its own cash resources to stay current.
