MEA bills drop about $5 a month, giving back part of summer increase

Matanuska Electric Association members will pay a little less for power starting Thursday, but bills will stay higher than they were in the spring. A typical household using 623 kilowatt-hours a month will pay about $5.32 less, a 3.1 percent drop from the third quarter, MEA said in a member notice posted Wednesday.

The cut comes in MEA's Cost of Power Adjustment, the part of the bill that covers what the co-op pays for fuel and for electricity it buys from other utilities, passed on to members without markup. That charge falls about 8.4 percent, from 10.195 cents to 9.34 cents per kilowatt-hour. MEA says the drop mainly reflects cheaper power from other utilities and a smaller balancing-account adjustment, which squares up past months when actual costs came in different from projections. Higher expected fuel and shipping costs in the colder months offset some of the savings. Fuel and purchased power make up about 37 percent of the average residential bill, MEA says.

The decrease gives back part of a summer increase. On July 1, the same charge rose about 29 percent, from 7.879 cents to 10.195 cents per kilowatt-hour, adding $14.53 to the typical monthly bill, or 9.26 percent, MEA said. Base rates didn't change. Taken together, the two changes leave the typical bill about $9.21 a month higher than in the spring, a figure based on MEA's numbers that the co-op hasn't published itself.

MEA says it has secured its own natural gas supply for the winter but could still be asked to help keep power flowing across Southcentral Alaska if needed. Rolling outages of 30 to 45 minutes would be a last resort, MEA says. MEA's filing with the Regulatory Commission of Alaska, which approves the adjustment, hasn't been posted yet.