The Public Utilities Commission today takes up a preliminary order rejecting the petition to reduce the base electric rate Sierra Pacific Power can charge customers in Northern Nevada.
The commission in December voted to let the Reno utility raise its basic service charge from $9.25 a month to $17.50 for single-family homes.
As a partial offset, the commission voted to lower the kilowatt-hour rate for those customers by 3.1 percent. The result is that the average monthly bill for residential customers would increase by about $3 to just over $93 a month.
The state’s consumer-protection bureau asked the PUC to reconsider, arguing that nearly doubling the basic service charge was excessive.
Commissioner David Noble rejected the petition to reconsider, saying the $17.50 rate is justified to recover Sierra Pacific’s costs.
The full commission considers the issue today.