ComEd seeks 8-percent rate hike
ComEd said Wednesday it intends to file for an electricity delivery rate increase to obtain about $361 million in additional revenue.
The electric utility, which is regulated by the Illinois Commerce Commission, said it needs the extra funds to pay for increasing equipment costs, to serve a dramatically growing population and to modernize its system with new technology.
The proposal, if approved, would affect the average residential customer's monthly bill by about 8 percent, or about $6 more on an average $75 monthly bill, said Anne Pramaggiore, ComEd executive vice president of customer operations, regulatory and external affairs.
"The difference today is we are planning to modernize and automate the system for the future," said Pramaggiore. "We want to employ the newest technology out there to help the system become self-correcting in outages. We want to automate meters and know when a customer has an outage and when they have their power back on, instead of having the customer call and complain."
ComEd said earlier this year it had intended to seek an increase to its delivery fee.
Electric bills are made up of different fees. Another part of the bill is the actual cost of electricity, which would not be impacted by this latest proposal. The cost of the electricity itself is passed through to customers without mark-up.
"We see no evidence that ComEd deserves a huge rate increase now," said Patricia Clark, associate director of the Citizens Utility Board, a consumer watchdog. "We will scrutinize their request and make sure that consumers don't pay a nickel more than they should."
Last year, ComEd was granted $83 million in additional revenue for a delivery rate increase, significantly lower than its original request of $340 million. At that time, ICC commissioners said the utility didn't support its case enough to justify the entire increase.
"We worked hard this time to provide as much support as possible to prove our case," said Bob McDonald, ComEd chief financial officer.
The ICC approval process takes about 11 months before a rate increase could be approved.