State slashes Rocky Mountain Power’s controversial rate hike

Rocky Mountain Power won’t get the full $140.2 million annual rate hike — a 21.6% increase — that it wants, the Wyoming Public Service Commission decided Tuesday. Instead, the utility might tap its 144,000 Wyoming ratepayers for about an extra $80 million, with the increase hitting customers’ monthly bills in January.
Alltold, sources close to the case have estimated the approved rate hike will land somewhere about 43% less than the historic increase that Rocky Mountain Power wanted.
Those are unofficial figures, based on WyoFile calculations in consultation with parties close to the rate case, and based on a handful of definitive decisions by the commission as it deliberated the rate case Tuesday.
Commission Chair Mary Throne acknowledged the unsatisfying obliqueness in the pending calculations in her closing statements.