A rate increase is on the horizon for Crawfordsville Electric Light & Power customers to generate more funding for system upgrades.
The proposed 8.95% overall average increase would take effect by next year pending regulatory approval. An ordinance adopting the new rates received a favorable recommendation Monday from the council’s fiscal affairs committee.
Residential customers would pay about $6 more per month under the new rates.
The planned increase comes as CEL&P seeks to make up a half-million dollar loss in revenue due to a billing formula change at energy supplier Indiana Municipal Power Agency.
Following the last rate uptick in 2015, CEL&P was bringing in enough money to begin updating the aging power grid. But when the formula changed, the rates fell back to “where we started” and put many of the projects on hold, Crawfordsville Utility Service Board President Don Swearingen told council members.
“We need this money to make sure that one of these days you don’t see Duke Energy trucks pulling up and down the street when you have an outage, four to five hours after the outage because they’re not a local established utility,” Swearingen said.
Under the original formula, half of the city’s bill from IMPA was determined by the highest amount of energy used in a 15-minute period at some point in the billing cycle. The formula is now based on 65% of the rate.
Even with the planned increase, customers would still be paying less than the rates of other providers, CEL&P said. The proposed rate of 111.32 per 1,000-kilowatt hour is less than Duke Energy’s proposed rate of $143.59, according to a rate study commissioned by CEL&P.
Indianapolis Power & Light customers paid $114.30 per 1,000-kilowatt hour in 2019, according to the study.
