by Alex Lloyd Gross
PECO wants to raise your electric and gas bills by about $20.00 and very few people are happy about it. In fact, those that support it are PECO board members. Recently, members of the democratic party weighed in against it. You can read that here.
Rarely, do republicans agree with democrats and vica versa, but now the State Republican Party has weighed in on the increase and they are not happy about it. Locally, State Rep KC Tomlinson (r) said “Not only do we not agree with a rate increase but continuing to raise rates for the consumer, our constituents, is not the answer, not will it fix the problem”.
The problem is huge data centers do not have their own generators , or power grid, they use so much electricity that it affects residential customers. A letter was written to PECO. A small portion of that letter, to Doug Oliver, who is in charge of governmental affairs for the utility reads as follows.
It is not lost upon us that PECO received a rate increase of 10% for electric and 12.5% for natural gas in January 2025. Since those rate increases were implemented, PECO’s net revenue increased 47.7% over the previous year to $814 million in 2025. The very next day after report earnings were announced,stock prices increased 5.5%.
On the grand scheme of things, $20.00 is not a lot of money but to some people it is. Some households will see less of an increase and some will see more, should this rate hike go through. This still must be approved by the Public Utility Commission. People can voice their opinions directly tothem for or against this hike.