Nearly $200 per year increases to your Pepco bill - just for “business as usual” delivery fees
Since July 2021, DC residents and businesses have endured rate increase from Pepco nearly every year. The reason? Simply to deliver energy to their door. This is not for the cost of energy itself (although, that has ballooned across our region and nationwide), but instead for the cost of service: maintaining powerlines, refreshing infrastructure, and the like. If this increase seems way too steep, industry experts and activists would agree.
Two multiyear rate increases are to blame, approved by PSC Chairman Emile Thompson (and later, Commissioner Ted Trabue). In July 2021, the first rate hike began. By end of 2023, it raised the average Pepco bill by $5.25. After raking in $108.6 million in rate hikes, Pepco petitioned for yet another rate hike on DC residents and businesses in 2024.
Despite pushback from industry experts, advocates, and the public, Thompson and Trabue approved an additional $123 million for Pepco in the form of rate hikes, which will bump the average bill by $11.34 by the end of 2026. In total, the average household bill will have increased by $16.59 per month, or a whopping $199.08 a year. In just five years, you will be paying $200 more per year to receive the same service from the same company in the same city.
Were all these hikes necessary? Was this actually a public good that’s very expensive? Not really. Analysis from Synapse Energy Economics found Pepco’s plan for this rate hike doesn’t actually modernize the electric grid. Instead, many of the projects it cited were upgrades that could be done with the finances on hand, which would not require hiking rates. Additionally, the Office of the People’s Counsel found there was little to no public benefit in these upgrades for this price. The PSC’s Thompson and Trabue greenlit it anyway, allowing Pepco to wildly spend ratepayer money and give a near 10% return to their shareholders.
Has all this money made Pepco more innovative? Are they investing in creative ways to procure cheaper energy or lower utility bills? Of course not. Bills in DC are still sky-high, as Washington DC saw the cost of energy increase 93.2% in just five years—the highest in the nation. In the midst of this affordability crisis, Pepco attempted to scam solar customers out of energy discounts and caught another lawsuit for their poorly-reasoned rate case, now being litigated in the DC Court of Appeals.
But this is the current nature of corporations: offer a middling service while robbing the public blind. In DC, the experience with electric service, reliability, or even outreach has not noticeably improved. The only real change has been the bills, always going in one direction, always squeezing an already struggling public. And DC’s regulators Emile Thompson and Ted Trabue have been more than happy to rubber stamp rate hike after rate hike onto DC’s schools, businesses, and homes.