For a Benton PUD residential customer, the increase will be applied to the residential daily system charge which will increase from 55 cents per day to 62 cents per day.  The residential rate per kilowatt-hour (kWh) will remain the same. 
 
For an average Benton PUD residential customer, this will result in an increase in the average monthly bill from approximately $113.40 to $115.50 (a 1.9 percent increase).    
 
The median monthly residential bill for comparable Northwest utilities is $122.
 
For all other customer classes, the 1.9% increase will apply to daily system charges or demand charges (where applicable).
 
The need for a revenue increase is directly attributed to BPA’s 5.4 percent average wholesale rate increase effective October 1, 2017.  BPA’s increase impacts Benton PUD by 3.8 percent. BPA’s wholesale rates continue to rise primarily due to decreasing wholesale market prices. BPA uses revenues from selling excess energy into the wholesale market to offset rates charged to utilities. Lower wholesale market prices result in lower wholesale market revenues to offset these rates.
 
Benton PUD’s last overall revenue increase was 4.9% in September 2016.