A larger utility bill: Duke Energy planning to increase rates over 3 years

State utility regulators will meet Thursday to discuss by how much the utility company should be allowed to raise electricity rates.

"Duke Energy has been making investments to strengthen the electric grid to make it more resistant to outages from severe weather and other threats," said spokesperson Jeff Brooks. "We’ve also been preparing the grid to transform it to be ready for cleaner energy options in the future. All of these investments are delivering very real benefits to customers but there’s a cost of that."

Last week, Duke Energy announced a partial settlement with the state Utilities Commission Public Staff that would reduce the company's original request to raise rates by 16% over the next three years. The recalculation of the rate hike has not yet been decided.

Duke Energy said the largest increase would be in the first year of the three-year period.

It means, over the next three years, the average customer will have paid more than $300 more than they would pay if rates weren't increased.

If approved by the North Carolina Utilities Commission rates for a typical residential customer using 1,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) per month would increase as follows:

Brooks explained a typical customer using 1000 kWh of electricity per month could see an increase of a little less than $15 in October 2023. The second year they would see an increase of about $5.62 followed by an increase of $5.21 in October 2025.

"We do recognize that there’s never a good time to have an increase in rates ... we understand that that can be very challenging for some of our customers and we want to do everything we can to make our cost as low as possible while also providing assistance to customers and preparing our system for the energy needs an expectations our customers will have in the years ahead," Brooks said.

Duke Energy estimates the new rates will be in place by Oct. 1.