Daily News | Utility bills are soaring in the Philly region and so is customer outrage
The reason your utility bill has increased is pretty straightforward: Energy prices are. You see it at the gas pump. Residents with furnaces that use heating oil or propane are experiencing it. And natural gas prices, which set the market rate for electricity, have doubled in the last year.
It’s not just Pennsylvania. Commodity prices for New Jersey utility customers are higher this year than the previous five years, according to the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, the state regulator. A rule of thumb 10 years ago is that energy costs were about two-thirds of a customer bill. But energy prices have declined in the last decade, with the advent of U.S. shale-gas production, and now account for less than half a typical utility bill.
But the commodity charges are different. In Pennsylvania, utilities are allowed to adjust their energy costs every three months to reflect fluctuations in the price they pay for gas or electricity. They are not permitted to make a profit on the fuel costs -- the cost is passed through to customers without a markup. Regulators audit the fuel charges annually to make sure the fees are justified.
But January’s weather was the coldest of any month in the last four years in Philadelphia. Combined with higher energy charges, it resulted in some eye-popping bills. So far in 2022, Peco has delivered 17% more gas to customers than anticipated.More than 150,000 New Jersey households enrolled in the state’s Universal Service Fund program in the last three months of 2021, surpassing the number that applied in the previous nine months.
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