City of Weiser power supplier keeps rates flat for 2020-21

The city of Weiser’s wholesale electricity supplier will not raise wholesale power rates for fiscal years 2020-21 after suggesting a hike was possible in January of this year.
 The Bonneville Power Administration, which sells power to 143 utilities in the Northwest, including Weiser, recently notified customers that it has established final rates for wholesale power and transmission services for the 2020-21 rate period.
 While the city of Weiser and other customers won’t see a rate hike in wholesale power purchases, the BPA is raising transmission rates by 3.6 percent for the two-year rate period beginning on Oct. 1.
 The city of Weiser operates its own electric utility but doesn’t generate any power. It buys wholesale power from the BPA and then turns around and sells the electricity to residential and business customers within the city limits. The BPA delivers the electricity to Weiser at a substation southwest of town.
 The BPA was able to forgo a hike in wholesale power rates for 2020-21 due to significant cost-cutting measures and a multi-year grid modernization. The flat rate keeps the average wholesale power cost at $35.62 per megawatt-hour and reflects the BPA’s objective to keep costs at or below the rate of inflation through 2028, the agency said.
 “Through collaboration with our customers and partners throughout the region, we have worked hard to bend the cost curve and keep base power rates flat,” BPA Administrator Elliot Mainzer said in a news release announcing the power rates.
 The BPA did caution, however, that a surcharge could be triggered in November that is designed to enable BPA to maintain at least 60 days cash on hand for both its power and transmission business by recovering up to $30 million per year. If the surcharge is implemented, the effective power rate would increase by up to 1.5 percent for the two-year rate period.
 For FY 2020, the city of Weiser has budgeted $2.76 million for power purchases from the BPA out of a total electric fund budget of $3.46 million. The city’s electric utility is a self-supporting enterprise fund that operates solely on electricity rates paid by city customers and receives no tax dollars.
 The city’s electric utility absorbed a 5.4 percent hike in wholesale power rates implemented by the BPA in 2018-2019 without passing the increase in costs on to residential and business customers. City officials said the increase in transmission costs for the 2020-21 rate period also would be absorbed by the city.
 The last time the city council raised electric rates was in March of 2015 in an effort to keep pace with the rising costs of buying power from the BPA. The increase of 5 percent added about $3 to the monthly bill for the average residential customer.
 The city had previously absorbed three rate increases from the BPA, but city officials said the electric fund could no longer afford to do that and the increased cost of wholesale power purchases would have to be passed along to customers.
 Weiser has historically been able to offer some of the lowest electric rates for residential and business customers in the region. Outside of the city limits, Idaho Power provides electricity services to Washington County residents.  
 The BPA is a nonprofit federal power marketer that sells wholesale electricity from 31 federal dams and one nuclear plant to 143 Northwest electric utilities, serving millions of consumers and businesses in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, western Montana and parts of California, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming.
 BPA delivers power via more than 15,000 circuit miles of lines and 261 substations to 546 transmission customers. In all, BPA markets about one-third of the electricity generated in the Northwest.