CASPER, Wyo. — Dozens filled the Ramkota Ballroom on Tuesday to meet with Rocky Mountain Power officials, many of whom had flown in from Salt Lake City to field concerns over a proposed new rate increase.
The utility’s proposed average 14.7% rate increase, which would go into effect next June, is currently before the Wyoming Public Service Commission. It could be up to 10 months before the commission considers stakeholders’ final evidence and testimony, according to Anthony Ornelas, administrator for the Office of Consumer Advocate.
His group, along with the Wyoming Industrial Energy Consumers, was recently admitted into the matter in its statutory role as an intervening party, with access to the supporting evidence and documentation that RMP is using to make its case that the increase is necessary and reflects only Wyoming’s 12–15% share of use on the integrated six-state system.
His office has only had the evidence for about three weeks.
“We question everything,” Ornelas said.
That may be the best news yet for residential customers and their legislative representatives who showed up to voice the consumers’ avowed inability to weather a higher price tag on just about anything. Those who show up to the RMP open houses report difficulty gaining traction against the company’s case.
“It’s not a public forum. They’re here giving you their spiel,” said Bill Allemand, representative for the 58th house district in Natrona County. Allemand, Rep. Tony Locke, Sen. Bob Ide and other civic leaders have joined their fellow power customers at the last two open houses.
“They’re extremely polished in everything they do,” Allemand told Oil City News. “These people walking in this door right now, all they know is they’re hurtin’.” Allemand says this increase could break people on fixed incomes already dealing with high property taxes, and will particularly hurt small industries.
The increase comes after a 5.5% increase in January that rose to 8.3% in July, a hike that would have been 29.2% if an error in RMP’s formulations had not been detected, WyoFile reported last December.
Company spokesperson David Eskelsen elaborated on the three major cost factors the company is citing at the meeting. One is the cost of capital investments for transmission and generation. Another is the cost of commodities like steel and concrete used in building infrastructure. A power plant built in 2017 cost twice as much as the same kind of plant built in 2002, Eskelsen told Oil City News.
Another factor is the skyrocketing cost of insurance due to liability from wildfires, which Eskelsen said has increased 1,800% just in the last few years.
Eskelsen said there is no doubt that temperatures are up and humidity is down, leading to prolonged fire seasons and much more damage. RMP’s parent company PacificCorp was found liable for damages caused by the Labor Day weekend wildfires in 2020 that killed nine and destroyed over 5,000 homes, according to the Associated Press.
Eskelsen and Rocky Mountain Power’s president, Dick Garlish, said the company is advocating at the state and federal level for some kind of intervention to assist with or cap liability rates for utility companies. They are also looking at deploying more technology to insulate fuses and circuitry.
Allemand said he and others feel that Wyoming ought to make full use of its coal deposits and other natural resources to be effectively self-sufficient.
“I want to break up the six-pack. We’re expected to make the energy and then we’re expected to take the energy out of state,” Allemand said, referencing energy projects in Wyoming that end up serving all six PacifiCorp states.
Ornelas said that logic formed the basis of the Office of the Consumer Advocate’s recommendation to the WPSC in 2017 not to grant RMP the authority to build two Gateway transmission line segments in Wyoming as part of its long-term transmission plan.
“We cited a lot of the oft-heard concerns, which is that the need was driven by a lot of out-of-state lodes. … It didn’t have a direct nexus to a deficiency in Wyoming,” Ornelas said.
They lost, Ornelas said, and the costs of those capital projects are ripening now.
However, Ornelas and Eskelsen said that the business of delivering power requires economies of scale, and that Wyoming benefits from power produced in other PacifiCorp states.
Eskelsen said RMP has long been invested in a diverse energy portfolio due to the favorable regulatory environment and the flexibility of having multiple fuel sources. Coal can be deployed on demand, while wind and solar have no fuel costs, Eskelsen said.
The company’s 2023 update to its Integrated Resource Plan calls for investment in “transmission infrastructure, new wind and solar resources, the conversion of two coal units to natural gas peaking units, growth in demand response and energy efficiency programs, the addition of carbon capture technology on identified coal resources, the addition of an advanced nuclear resource, the addition of energy storage resources, and the addition of natural gas peaking resources that are capable of converting to non-emitting fuels.”
“I’d much rather look at a coal mine or an oil well because there’s not much of it there, it’s a very small area,” Allemand said.
