NPPD rate hikes disputed

Oct. 8, 2015, 3:49 a.m. ·

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Customers and NPPD board members at rate hike hearing in Columbus Thursday. (Photo by Fred Knapp, NET News)

The Nebraska Public Power District is proposing a rate increase that some customers are calling unfair. Others say it’s the only fair way to cover rising costs.


NPPD is Nebraska’s largest electric utility, supplying about 600,000 people at wholesale or retail. It was wholesale customers who called for Thursday’s hearing. They’re upset at NPPD’s proposed 3.8% rate increase because they say it wouldn’t apply to everyone. The utility’s offering to raise rates by only 0.6% of a percent for customers who sign new 20 year contracts.

Some rural public power districts and some municipalities, like Wayne in northeast Nebraska, don’t want that contract. They plan to buy power from cheaper sources in the future. Wayne city attorney Amy Miller, described the proposal for the two-tiered rate increase to NPPD’s elected board members as “a discriminatory tactic developed by your staff to force wholesale customers onto a new contract. And it is not legal,” Miller said.

Mark Shults of the Northeast Nebraska Public Power District estimated the higher rates could cost residential customers about another $20 a year, and a big industrial customer, like an ethanol plant, $18,000.

Todd Swartz of NPPD said the utility needs extra money to begin catching up with funding retiree health care benefits. “All wholesale customers will be charged for their share of these obligations. There will just be a difference in the time period over which these customers pay,” Swarts said.

Other wholesale customers support the two-tiered rate increase, saying they don’t want to pay a greater share of health care costs when other customers leave NPPD. The utility says its board could make a final decision by the end of the month. The new rates will take effect Jan. 1.