SaskPower rate increase approved, SaskEnergy also seeking rate hike

Homeowners in Saskatchewan will be paying more for power in the coming months — and their energy bills could be going up too.

In a media release Monday, the Saskatchewan Rate Review Panel announced it has approved SaskPower’s proposed four per cent rate increase starting Sept. 1, and another four per cent rate increase effective April 1, 2023.

“The bill impacts will be different for individual customers,” the release said. “For a typical urban residential customer (monthly usage of 625 kWh), the bill increase from April 1, 2022, to April 1, 2023, will be approximately $11 per month (10 per cent).

“However, the bill the customer pays, which includes taxes and levies, is expected to increase by $14 (11 per cent). For a typical urban residential customer, their bill at April 1, 2023, will include $24 in taxes (16 per cent of the total bill).”

The panel also approved a proposed rebalancing of its rates, which would put urban and rural residential customers into one rate class. That would result in the basic monthly fee increasing for urban customers and decreasing for those in rural areas.

Meanwhile, SaskEnergy announced it has filed “a combined one-year commodity and three-year delivery service rate proposal with the Saskatchewan Rate Review Panel.”

If the proposal is approved, residential customers will pay on average $11.95 more per month in the first year, $2.43 more per month in Year 2, and $2.53 more per month in the third year.

The proposal would see the rate increase start Aug. 1. The second and third years would take effect on June 1, 2023 and June 1, 2024, respectively.

The company said its bills comprise the commodity rate and the delivery service rate. The commodity rate reflects the market costs of natural gas and doesn’t generate a profit or loss for SaskEnergy.

It would be only the second commodity rate increase for SaskEnergy since 2014. The last change to the company’s delivery service rate was in April 2019.

SaskPower

The Crown corporation applied for the rate increase to offset increasing fuel and power costs caused by rising natural gas prices, a need for increased operating income after the company’s net income dropped from $160 million in 2020-21 to $11 million in 2021-22, and increased financial pressure due to higher inflation and interest rates.

The rate review panel agreed with the proposal — and also noted more changes may be coming in the future.

“The Panel also noted that the pressures impacting rates today will continue in both the short-term and longer-term future and that SaskPower’s ratepayers will likely see increasing rates in the years to come,” the company said in its release.

SaskEnergy

According to the company, it’s proposing a commodity rate of $4.20 per gigajoule — lower than the market price for natural gas — where others across the country are charging more than $8 per gigajoule.

“SaskEnergy’s residential customers currently have the lowest natural gas bills in Canada and will continue to have the lowest natural gas bills in the country if this proposal is approved,” Mark Guillet, the company’s acting president and CEO, said in the release.

SaskEnergy said it has been trying to keep its costs low and limiting delivery rate increases through “internal efficiencies,” including business process changes, Crown collaboration, leveraging technology and mitigating operating and capital costs.