Homer Electric bills rise about $8 a month as power cost charge climbs

An average Homer Electric Association household is paying about $8 more a month after the cooperative raised the charge it uses to pass along fuel and purchased-power costs Oct. 1.

The Cost of Power Adjustment rose from 10.32 to 11.76 cents per kilowatt-hour, adding $7.92 to the monthly bill of a residential member using 550 kilowatt-hours, according to HEA's October CEO report. HEA resets the charge every three months, separately from its base rate.

The charge reflects "primarily the cost of fuel and power purchased from the Bradley Lake Hydroelectric Project," the report says. It doesn't say which drove this increase.

Time off the grid has moved the charge before. When HEA is islanded, or cut off from the wider Alaska grid, it has to carry more spinning reserves on its own. Its July report credited that quarter's decrease partly to fewer hours of islanding.

HEA expects about 117 days of scheduled islanding over the next 12 months, plus a 65-day outage at its Nikiski Combined Cycle plant. It has also held back on Bradley Lake hydropower to save water for a large amount of islanding planned in 2027.

The charge has swung this year. It fell 14.8 percent in January, more than offsetting a 4 percent base-rate increase that took effect the same day, then rose in April and dipped in July. Last October's increase was smaller, adding $1.36 a month.

For the year, HEA is ahead of budget, with margins of $1.6 million, about $0.5 million more than planned, the October report says. Alaska News reported Sept. 5 that HEA lost about $2.2 million on June operations as purchased power ran over budget. HEA later said that largely reflected billing by its generation subsidiary, Alaska Electric & Energy Cooperative.

Tree-related outages fell to 221 through September, from 335 over the same period last year. HEA credited its vegetation management work.