While most of your were bringing in the New Year, at midnight on Saturday, the PUC and BEL were bringing in new rates and they did it without anyone knowing. Yesterday, the PUC made public the decision that it has approved a 13% average rate increase for BEL effective January first. That means the average charge per kilowatt-hour now increases from 39 cents to 44.1 cents. And while the rate increase is one thing, service charges have also been increased sharply across the board, going up anywhere from 33% to 100%.
There are different charges for different sectors, and here's the official breakdown. Those consumers who use lees than 50-kilowatt hours per month on the social rate, will see only a one cent increase in the kilowatt charges. Residential customers will be the hardest hit. The monthly service charge is going up 100% from five to ten dollars, and the first fifty kilowatts they use will cost 16% more. The rate from 51 to 200 kilowatts will go up 8% and usage above 200 kilowatts will increase by 10%.
Commercial customers will also see a sharp increase in service charge as that increases from $70 to $100, 42% more. For those customers, usage rates will also increase in every category. There are also rate increases for BEL's industrial customers and for government which pays for streets lights.
How many will be affected in each sector? Well, BEL's Public Relations Department couldn't say today but we do know that BEL has close to 70,000 customers, and most are in the commercial and residential brackets, while far fewer are in the social and industrial brackets. In November, BEL asked for a 14% increase to put money back into the rate stabilization account, which, due to the rising cost of fuel has accumulated a $26 million deficit. Now with this increase, BEL and the PUC hope to replenish it over the next four years, assuming that the world fuel prices remains relatively stable.
For consumers it's the second in a string of price shocks. First in, July of last year BEL got an 11% increase, and now there's this 13% increase. And of course, the coup de grâce on all this will be the goods and service tax which will be charged on all bills over $150. Again, weeks after it became public knowledge, an absurdly secretive and abstruse BEL still cannot say how many consumers will be in the GST exempt brackett. But for those likely tens of thousands who are not in the exempted, by July first when GST is implemented, they will be paying 35% more for electricity than they were paying a year earlier.
