The start of the New Year will bring changes to your OPPD bill.
While the letter inside your bill reads “No 2017 Rate Increase,” that is not entirely true.
If you look at the breakdown of your bill, you are used to seeing a $15 dollar serve charge and a kWh usage charge. But starting in January 2017 OPPD will increase their service charge to $20, but your usage charge will go down.
“Most average use customers who's bills hover between $80 to $125 dollars a month will see little to no difference at all, those who use more would see a decrease, and those who use less would see an increase,” said Jodi Baker, OPPD Media Relations.
Baker said this additional $5 charge is phase two of the utility's restructuring, and by 2019 the service charge will go up to $30 dollars.
“It really has a lot to do with those fixed charges that we incurred in order to deliver power to our customers, you have your power lines, transmission lines, maintenance costs, a lot of other costs that go into bringing power to customers,” she said.
While OPPD said that the service charge and usage should balance out on the bill, others aren't sold.
“For them to say they are not raising their rates, when it fact everyone's bill is going up because of a fixed charge, that is still raising their rate,” said Philip Young who is the Executive Director for the Americans for Electricity Choice.
The “no rate increase” in the 2017 newsletter refers to the general rate increase and in the article it talks about the rate restructuring that started last June, but it does discuss the increase to the usage charge.
One customer wrote into the Omaha World-Herald saying, "What difference does it make if it is a fixed-cost or rate increase? My bill will be increasing by $20 regardless."
“What this plan does is it insulates us from the volatility that could exists otherwise in the energy industry and it helps us know what to expect and our customers know what to expect, while really being revenue neutral it helps keep things more steady,” said Baker.
