Higher bills for electricity, gas begin in August
Monthly electricity bills for the average Central Hudson residential customer will rise by $12.65 and gas charges by $12.25 under one-year delivery rates approved Thursday (July 18) by the state Public Service Commission.
The PSC’s decision, which will raise monthly bills by 7.9 percent for electricity and 9.2 percent for gas and be in effect until June 30, 2025, represents a reduction in Central Hudson’s original rate request in August 2023.
Under that plan, the utility’s customers, including 6,800 households and businesses in Beacon and 5,200 in Cold Spring, Nelsonville, Philipstown and Kent, would have seen their monthly bills rise by an average of $30 for each service.
The new rates mirror those recommended by two administrative law judges assigned to mediate negotiations over the proposal, with the PSC also using $18.5 million of an estimated $40 million the utility owes to customers to reduce the increase further.
Like the PSC, the judges also rejected the size of the increases sought by the utility, along with demands by elected officials, advocates and customers to deny any hike due to billing problems.
Those billing issues, which began with the company’s switch to a new customer service system in September 2021, will cost Central Hudson $63 million under a settlement the PSC approved on June 20. (The PSC also applied $4 of the settlement funds to reducing the rate increase.)
Joe Hally, Central Hudson’s vice president of regulatory affairs, said the additional revenues will allow the company to “make critical investments” in new employees, infrastructure and equipment upgrades to meet renewable energy goals, and responses to extreme weather.
New rates to take effect once the ones approved on Thursday expire will be proposed “in the near future,” said the company.
Assembly Member Jonathan Jacobson, whose district includes Beacon, called the new delivery rates “an unaffordable insult to all customers, given Central Hudson’s track record with its billing fiasco.” He added: “The entire rate-setting formula must be reformed.”
