The South Dakota Public Utilities Commission has granted utilities increases for Montana-Dakota customers.
This increase affects almost 65,000 natural gas customers and over 8,000 electricity customers.
PUC Commissioners voted to increase Montana-Dakota Utilities customers rates by an average of eight percent.
This is the first increase for MDU customers in the state since 2016, though it’s not as steep of an increase originally asked for by the company.
Travis Jacobson works for MDU. He said the agreement is a fair compromise.
"The settlement results in an increase of $5.4 million in annual revenue, or 8.14 percent. Montana-Dakota did enter an interim increase on March 1 on the natural gas system as well. The settlement does include a refund plan," said Jacobson.
The interim increase in utility costs some customers saw on their bills was higher than what was settled with the PUC. MDU agreed to refund those customers based on the newly agreed upon rate.
The typical residential electricity customer will see an average increase of about $8.26 per month, while the typical gas customer’s monthly bill will go up around $4.45.
Chris Nelson is a Public Utilities Commissioner. He challenged PUC staff to ensure that rate payers’ are not paying for unneeded infrastructure updates.
“It sounds like the projects that are included in this particular rate case, there in that category that’s certainly from a safety perspective, needed to be replaced. I think that the only thing I would say to staff is, 10 to 12 years down the road when they come back for another rate case, this prudence of investment is a big question and whatever types of eyes you need on that to make sure we’re in the right spot here I think would pay dividends to the rate payers,” said Nelson.
MDU representatives responded to Nelson’s concern by turning to their ethical model of business.
