FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Thursday, May 23, 2019
LANSING – The Citizens Utility Board of Michigan (CUB of MI) today applauds the outcome of an approved settlement agreement sparing residential customers a massive rate hike originally proposed by the Upper Peninsula Power Company in UPPCO Rate Case U-20276 before the Michigan Public Service Commission.
UPPCO originally asked for an additional $9 million per year in revenue. Under this settlement agreement approved today by the MPSC, they will be allowed to collect only $1.8 million.
“We’re happy to see that under this agreement, UPPCO’s residential customers won’t be taking the brunt of this rate hike as we’ve seen in other recent Michigan utility rate case decisions,“ said Amy Bandyk, executive director of CUB of MI. “We’re glad Attorney General Dana Nessel got involved to fight this exorbitant rate increase request.”
Attorney General Nessel and U.P. consumer group Citizens Against Rate Excess (CARE), who intervened in this rate case, were able to reach this settlement with UPPCO so that residential ratepayers won’t have to pay for the new rate increase. Their rates per kilowatt-hour will actually go down slightly. UPPCO also dropped their request to increase their fixed monthly charge by $10 per month.
“Overall, while we think the electricity rates that UPPCO’s residential customers pay in the U.P. are still way too high, this is definitely a step in the right direction,” said Bandyk.
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The Citizens Utility Board of Michigan (CUB of MI) was formed in 2018 to represent the interests of residential energy customers across the state of Michigan. CUB of MI’s educates and engages Michigan consumers in support of cost-effective investment in energy efficiency and renewable energy and against unfair rate increase requests. CUB of MI’s gives a voice to Michigan utility customers and helps to ensure that citizens of the state pay the lowest reasonable rate for utility services and also benefit from the environmental implications of investment in clean energy. CUB of MI is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization whose members are individual residential customers of Michigan’s energy utilities. For more information about CUB of MI, visit www.cubofmichigan.org.