Rocky Mountain Power is seeking a lower rate increase for Utah electricity users than the 30% hike the utility requested two months earlier, after it received feedback from its customers.
In an amended request filed Wednesday with Utah’s Public Service Commission, Rocky Mountain Power said it is asking for a rate increase of 18.1% starting in February. That’s less than what the utility was seeking in a request that was made public on June 28.
In the filing, the company said the 18% increase — which would take effect Feb. 23, if approved — would bring in 41% less revenue than the larger increase.
Based on that figure, the 18% increase would add an estimated $14.24 per month to an average Utah customer’s power bills. The 30% hike would have raised Utahns’ power bills by $24.14 a month.
Rocky Mountain Power said it would eliminate the second of two rate increases in its original request, which would have taken effect on Jan. 1, 2026, the company said in its filing. This was done, the utility said, “to further mitigate the customer impacts” of the rate increase.
RMP, the filing said, “has heard the concerns of its customers regarding the requested increase in this case combined with other cost pressures and continued to review ways of further mitigating the impact of the requested increase on customers.”
The company also said it would revise the amount of excess liability insurance premiums for 2025. Premiums have gone up, the company wrote in its filing, because of the increased risk of wildfires across the West.
Logan Mitchell, climate scientist and energy analyst for Utah Clean Energy, said the nonprofit advocacy group is still looking at the details of RMP’s revised request, “but this is welcome news for Utah ratepayers, at least for the short term.”
Most of the requested 18% rate hike, Mitchell said, “is still tied to rising fossil fuel costs and PacifiCorp’s insurance premiums increasing due to wildfires, so we are still at risk for more rate spikes in the future.”
RMP’s request, Mitchell said, “underlines the need to add more zero fuel cost energy like wind, solar and geothermal to protect customers from rising and volatile fuel prices.”
Utah legislators asked Rocky Mountain Power’s president, Dick Garlish, in a hearing last week whether the rate hike request was connected to higher insurance premiums that RMP’s parent company, PacifiCorp, was paying in Oregon — after the company was held liable for wildfires in 2020 sparked by power lines that were left running in areas of extreme fire danger. Garlish said the increase wasn’t directly due to PacifiCorp’s liability, but was meant to cover higher insurance premiums RMP had to pay because of the Oregon fires.
Republican legislators also told Garlish that RMP should create a new structure for assessing rate increases, one that doesn’t make Utah customers pay for the company’s expenses in states with different energy policies. A leading Democrat in the Utah House called the demand “outlandish” and “a fundamental misunderstanding of how the system operates.”
Earlier this year, the Utah Legislature passed two bills to keep the state’s two biggest coal plants alive, and to allow Rocky Mountain Power to pass the costs onto its customers. Lawmakers had already urged RMP to backtrack on a pledge to transition away from coal and toward cleaner energy in its Utah power generation.
The Public Services Commission is scheduled to hold hearings on Rocky Mountain Power’s rate hike request in December.
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