Questions and answers about your electric rates
About 70 percent. Whenever Bonneville raises its wholesale power rates, it can have
a big impact on EWEB's costs and on customers' electric bills.
EWEB's elected board of commissioners has a policy of "passing through"
to customers any increase or decrease in BPA wholesale power costs.
The impact of BPA rate changes varies according to each utility's power-purchase
contract with the federal agency. This is because BPA has different types of power
contracts. Some utilities buy power in large blocks, while others have contracts
that allow them to purchase a percentage of the output of the Columbia River hydroelectric
system. Sometimes BPA raises the price of one type of power it sells and lowers
the price of another, at the same time. That helps explain why one public utility
may announce a 5 percent rate increase, while another utility may only raise rates
by 1 or 2 percent, or not at all.
The November 2009 rate action recovers additional charges resulting from wholesale energy cost increases by the
Bonneville Power Administration. Bonneville, which supplies EWEB with about 70 percent of its electricity needs,
increased its wholesale rates in the fall of 2009. EWEB commissioners have a general policy of passing on
to customers any increase or decrease in Bonneville power costs.
The average residential customer saw an increase of $3.78 per month, or 4.5 percent.
The November 2009 rate change marks the first increase since 2006. EWEB has decreased rates four times since 2005, for a
cumulative decrease of about 6 percent. Due to recessionary pressures on its revenues, EWEB has undertaken a
series of austerity measures that have reduced its 2009 budget by about $2.6 million, with plans to cut
another $2 million from its 2010 budget.