The utility rate case — filed on June 26, more than a year ahead of schedule — would add approximately $7 to monthly bills of 1,000 kilowatt/hours of use the PUC approves it without changes.
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Oncor Electric, the DFW electric utility, seeks to collect an additional $834 million in revenue under a rate proposal the company filed this week with the Texas Public Utility Commission.
The utility rate case — filed on June 26, more than a year ahead of schedule — would add approximately $7 to monthly bills of 1,000 kilowatt hours of use if the PUC approves it without changes. According to Oncor, that would represent a 4.7 percent bill increase.
Oncor’s deadline to file its base-rate case would not have come until 2027 but the company indicated that it wanted to increase rates much sooner because of “hyper-growth” in its service territory and because it wants to profit from its investments more quickly. “The company is in need of adjusting its rates much sooner to meet the needs of its customers,” Oncor also states in its filing, adding that it “has made historically large investments in its transmission and distribution system December 31, 2021, the end of the test year in its last base-rate case.”
Oncor’s rate filing is based on system-wide financial results for the 12-month test year ending on Dec. 31, 2024. If approved without changes, the added $834 million would represent a 13 percent increase over current annualized revenues of $6.4 billion, according to the company.
Oncor has requested an effective date of July 31, 2025, although, for procedural reasons, new rates probably won’t take effect before the end of the year. City coalitions, including the Steering Committee of Cities Served by Oncor, have intervened in the case to represent the interests of their member cities and their citizens in the proceedings. More information can be found in PUC Docket No. 58306.
Billions of Dollars in Added Spending Since 2021
The rate filing comes in the wake of more than a dozen other Oncor rate increases since 2021. These include a $106.3 million Distribution Cost Recovery Factor increase approved by the PUC earlier this year (PUC Docket No. 57707); a $90.3 million DCRF in 2024 (PUC Docket No. 56963); a $81.3 million DCRF in 2024 (PUC Docket No. 56306); a $53.5 million DCRF in 2023 (PUC Docket No. 55525); and a $152.5 million DCRF in 2023 (PUC Docket No. 55190).
Combined, the PUC has authorized at least $1 billion in rate increases for Oncor over the last five years. But even that fails to include an additional $3 billion in separate Oncor resiliency spending, which the PUC authorized earlier this year in Docket No. 56545. The company likewise notes that it plans to spend more than $36 billion over the next five years on capital projects.