Austin Energy: Rate increasing 5% beginning New Year's Day; future increases possible
Editor’s note: The above video shows KXAN’s morning headlines for Friday, Dec. 22, 2023.
AUSTIN (KXAN) — Effective Jan. 1, Austin Energy (AE) said it would implement a 5% increase to the Power Supply Adjustment (PSA) rate.
The utility said the impact of the increase would be approximately $2 a month for the typical residential customer.
The utility company most recently applied a 5% rate increase that began Dec. 1.
Per Austin Energy’s policy, the utility can only adjust the PSA in increments of up to 5%.
“The increase is required to continue making progress on recovering power supply costs in order to position Austin Energy for an anticipated PSA under-recovery during the summer months,” AE said.
In November 2022, AE said it had an under-recovered PSA balance of $102 million, so it began planning to recover the balance over the next three years.
As of Nov. 30, 2023, AE said the current under-recovered balance was $78 million.
Read the full memo from Austin Energy below.
“To be on a path for full PSA recovery by November 2025, Austin Energy anticipates the need to be over-recovered by the start of summer 2024," AE said. "For example, if the PSA balance can improve to a $25 million over-recovery going into the summer, a $75 million summer under-recovery would result in a $50 million under-recovery on November 1, 2024, with one year left to recover the negative balance.”
The utility said it planned to continue to make PSA changes as needed to be on schedule.