The Latest Utilities Board Decision and What it Means For You

You may recall that last year, Yukon Energy asked the Yukon Utilities Board for permission to raise rates by just over 13 percent over two years (2012 and 2013). We now have the final decision by the YUB. The board has granted us an 11.01 percent increase over those two years, to take effect on July 1st. It will show up on your bill as Rider J.

You may also remember that while the YUB considered our application, it allowed us to charge an “interim rate”. Effective July 1st, 2012, that rate was 6.4 percent, and then in January of this year we were allowed to charge an additional 3.75 percent on an interim basis. On July 1st the 11.01 percent rate replaces those two interim riders.

Now that we know our approved rates, there must also be a ‘true up’ to make up for the difference between what we charged on an interim basis and what the approved final rate increase is for those two years. That ‘true up’, which amounts to just over 3.6 percent, will show up on your bill as Rider R . It will be there from July 1st of this year to the end of June of next year.

So what will this look like on your power bills? It will be different for each household, since no two households use the same amount of electricity each month. But as an example, we’ll use the amount of 1,000 kWh a month, which is a fairly typical monthly usage.

Before July of 2012, you would have paid $118.26. This includes all the charges, the GST, and the Interim Electrical Rebate, which gives you a credit of $26.60.

As of July 2012, you would have paid $127.40 (based on the premise that you used the same amount of electricity). This increase reflects the 2012 interim rate allowed by the Yukon Utilities Board.

In January of this year, your bill for the same amount of power would have been $130.36 and includes the 2013 interim rate allowed by the Utilities Board.

As of July 1st of this year, you will pay $136.76 for 1,000 kWh of electricity. This includes the YUB-approved final rate plus the ‘true up’ explained earlier in this article. The true-up rider will end at the end of June 2014.

Clearly no one is happy about having to pay higher power bills. But just as costs for other services (groceries, housing costs, vehicles, etc.) have all gone up over the years, so must the price charged for electricity, since we too are facing higher operating costs.

This may be of little consolation to you, but in spite of these increases, Yukoners still pay the lowest power rates in the North, and we are on par with several Canadian provinces, and pay less for electricity than Albertans do.

If you’d like to learn more about why this increase was necessary, please read this earlier blog post. As always, we are happy to answer any questions you may have.