San Diego Gas & Electric is warning heavy users of home electricity that their utility bill will increase disproportionately at the end of August.
SDG&E recently was granted a 7.6 percent revenue increase. The change is retroactive to the start of 2012, so many bills will rise even more to catch up.
Most customers won’t see much of a change. Those who use significantly more than the average household — one-quarter of customers in San Diego and southern Orange counties — can prepare to pay a lot more, by SDG&E’s estimate.
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The utility is distributing advisories to those customers on measures they can take to conserve power and otherwise prepare for the changes.
Under a complex rate formula, a coastal customer using 400 kilowatt hours of electricity can expect to see their bill increase by $5 to $91, while an 800-kilowatt customer would see an increase of $56 to $255. Prices vary, depending on what climate zone a consumer lives in — coastal, inland, mountain or desert.
The average utility customer uses about 500 kilowatt hours per month.
Before the new rate increase, SDG&E’s residential rates led the state among major investor-owned utilities and major municipal utilities such as Los Angeles Department of Water & Power and the Imperial Irrigation District, according to the Energy Information Administration, a statistical arm of the Energy Department. California ranks ninth in the U.S. for residential electricity prices.
Days may be numbered for the state’s current rate structure, under which the price per kilowatt hour can double as the customer uses more power in any given month.
Read more at: http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/jul/02/tp-big-electricity-users-get-walloped-on-bills/
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