MORGANTOWN – The Public Service Commission on Thursday gave FirstEnergy sisters Mon Power and Potomac Edison the OK to pursue one of the two rate-increase options they presented to the PSC last Friday.
The PSC agreed to allow the companies to pursue their “Inflation and Investment Adjustment” approach.
As proposed, they would seek an adjustment of $76 million, with annual $38 million adjustments effective August 1, 2026, and June 1, 2027. Under this proposal, they would not seek another rate review until April 2028.
The initial monthly increase for an average residential customer would be $4.12, about 3%. The 2027 increase would be $4.11, about 2.9%.
The order notes, though, that the proposed rates would be suspended pending PSC investigation and decision, and not take effect until March 12, 2027. The order does not indicated when the second step would take effect.
The order includes a procedural schedule that sets an evidentiary hearing and public comments for July 9.
The option the PSC did not choose was a traditional “Base Rate Adjustment,” where the companies proposed an adjustment of $188 million. This figure included funding for a reliability and infrastructure improvement initiative to replace older equipment and add new technology to reduce the number and length of outages, they said.
This proposed increase would have taken effect June 14, and would have raised an average monthly bill by $19.44, about 13.9%.
In the companies request to the PSC and in a subsequent press release, they noted that the inflation-based approach would spread smaller increases over time instead of one larger increase, giving customers more predictability.
Commenting on their inflation-based option, they noted a prior PSC precedent and told the PSC last Friday, “The companies believe there is value to the commission’s approach of trying to keep rates lower than they would be otherwise and to spread rate increases in the interest of gradualism.”
The companies filed their previous rate case in May 2023 and a settlement was announced in January 2024. That was the companies’ first rate case since 2014.
The two companies serve about 558,000 customers in West Virginia. Mon Power serves about 395,000 customers in 34 counties. Potomac Edison serves about 155,000 customers in the Eastern Panhandle.
EMAIL: dbeard@dominionpost.com
