Oklahoma Corporation Commission sets date to vote on PSO rate hike case

By Christopher Moore, FOX23 News

PSO customers who have already been dealing with higher electric bills could soon get a better idea of what comes next after the Oklahoma Corporation Commission set a date to vote on PSO’s rate hike case.

The commission is set to vote next Tuesday, November 3 on a proposed rate increase that would raise total bills by at least 1.5% across all customer classes.

But commissioners say the rate increase for residential customers could be potentially in the high 1% to mid 2% range.

Commissioner Brian Bingman says the goal is to avoid putting an uneven burden on different types of customers.

“To try to make sure we don’t get a really strange and unfair outcome in how the rate increase in this case impacts different customer classes, we’ve included the residential customers this draft includes a minimum 1.5% total bill increase for all customer classes before any customer class gets a larger increase,” he says. “That prevents anybody from getting a decrease or a flat bill while another customer class has some kind of serious increase.”

The proposal would also require PSO to refund some of the interim rates customers have already paid, because those rates were higher than the amount allowed under the proposed order.

By law, that refund would have to be completed within 90 days of the new rates taking effect.

Commissioner Hiett says the final impact on residential customers isn’t yet clear, but he expects the increase to be much lower than an earlier proposal that would have raised residential bills by about 5%.