Naperville approves 2 percent electric rate increase

Naperville residents will soon see an 11.25 percent increase on their electric bills.

The city council approved a 2 percent rate hike Tuesday on top of the 9.25 percent increase already scheduled for residential rates.

That means average customers who are now paying $80 to $100 a month, will pay about $9 to $11 more on each bill when the increase takes effect May 1.

Naperville is one of several dozen cities in Illinois that owns its own electrical utility. It purchases power at wholesale rates and distributes it to local customers.

In 2006, the city approved an agreement for wholesale electric with J. Aron and Company/Goldman Sachs and set up a schedule to phase in rate increases over the four years of the contract. That timetable called for a 9.25 percent fee increase for residential customers this year. Larger commercial and industrial customers are scheduled for increases ranging from 21 percent to 34 percent.

"They're fairly significant but we were way down low in the past," said Mark Curran, assistant director for public utilities-electric.

However, the Federal Regulatory Commission has now granted Commonwealth Edison two rate increases to upgrade its transmission system, causing Naperville to incur an additional $2.5 million in costs. Therefore the city will in turn raise rates by another 2 percent this year for both residential and non-residential customers.

"If we don't incorporate it into the rate there's no way we can recoup that cost so we would be running a loss," Councilman Darlene Senger said.

Even with the rate hike, Curran said residents would still be paying 8 percent to 10 percent less than they would if they went directly through ComEd.

The city's electric crews are on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week. During outages they average 15 to 30 minutes to respond and restore power within two to three hours.