New York – Get set for another shock to your wallet from Con Ed.
Subscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
The utility is looking to jack up rates in May 2010, adding about $6.50, or 8 percent, to a typical residential customer’s $83.60 monthly bill.
But if the state Public Service Commission doesn’t buy that plan, Con Ed is offering a Plan B that would increase rates even further, boosting the same typical customer’s bill by $8, or 9.6 percent.
Under both proposals filed yesterday, Con Ed wants similar rate hikes in 2011 and 2012.
The company says it needs the money to improve its infrastructure as well as more cash to stave off the lenders who finance its transformers, cables and other equipment.
But the company’s request, which comes on the heels of a price hike that kicked in on May 1, would fatten its own coffers more than its estimate of the overall rate increase indicates. The portion of the cash the company keeps for its own expenses would jump by almost 17 percent.
This rate increase is very small compared to other east coast utilities and is well deserved given that rates have not kept up with the skyrocketing costs of fuel and power…Con Ed doesn’t own powerplants any longer…they must buy the power in the wholesale market at whatever the price is to keep the lights on. They also have billions of dollars in deferred investment that they have put off for too long in new transmission lines. If they don’t get the money then stop complaining about all the blackouts this summer.
How often can they jack up our rates where are our elected officials why isn’t anybody getting involved let them know they cannot do what they want New York has the highest electric rates already, when will this robbery end?
Keep voting for Bloomberg and you’ll get more of the same.
CON – ED has nothing to do with the city, and is a publicly traded company
Can they incraese whenevr they want ? this is redicius.
I wish the electric bill was only $83.60 a month. Maybe that’s the average for a studio apartment. For many of us that 8% will translate to considerably more than an additinal $6.50 per month. Con Ed raises rates virtually every year and the Public Service Commission always okays the raises. I don’t believe the PSC serves the “public” at all.
It’s a fact that ConEd (like all NY electric and gas utilities) is treated by Patterson and Bloomberg like a cow to be milked. Whenever ConEd requests an increase in rates, it must prove to the NYS Public Service Commission why it needs the increase and the PSC is very tough on ConEd. The fact is that It is much easier for Patterson and Bloomberg to hide a tax increase in an electric bill than to tax you and me directly. NYS just imposed a new 2% gross receipts tax (that is 2% of Con Ed’s gross income, not net income!) on ConEd to balance the state budget. This 2% translates into a much larger amount because other NY gross receipts taxes and sales taxes are then lumped on top.
ConEd is the largest property taxpayer in NYC and Bloomberg uses ConEd to balance the NYC budget. Whenever there is a deficit, the utilities are the first to be slammed because the government knows that they can’t pick up their wires and pipes and leave. You may not like the increase but it is all related to hidden state and local taxes.