EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) — Some El Pasoans noticed higher electricity bills, some saying it’s the highest charge they’ve seen.<\/p>\n
El Paso Electric said what residents are seeing are summer rates and newly-approved rates taking effect.\u00a0<\/p>\n
With these changes, some EPE customers said their bill tripled.<\/p>\n
Katherine Laca said she already struggles to balance household expenses while raising her daughter.<\/p>\n
“I can’t have enough money to buy her what she needs for school, what she needs because I need to pay the bill,” Laca said.<\/p>\n
Laca said her monthly electric bill is usually around $35. But when she opened her latest bill, she found a charge of $182.<\/p>\n
“$182, and, well, I want to know what’s going on,” she said.<\/p>\n
El Paso Electric said two factors contributed to the increase.<\/p>\n
The first is new electric rates that were approved by state regulators and recently took effect. The utility said the rate review process had been underway for more than a year and was needed to recover the cost of replacing aging infrastructure and maintaining reliable service.<\/p>\n
“It was approved and implemented,” a company spokesperson said. “The reason that we went for a rate review is because we were trying to recover costs with updating old and outdated infrastructure to ensure reliability across the board because that’s one of our priorities.”<\/p>\n
The second factor is seasonal summer pricing, which remains in effect through October.<\/p>\n
Customers may notice charges on their bills listed as “Summer 1st Tier” and, for some, a second-tier rate. The utility said the first tier covers electricity use between 0 and 600 kilowatt-hours. Residential customers who use more than 600 kilowatt-hours are billed at a higher rate, with usage above that threshold charged at about 14 cents per kilowatt-hour.<\/p>\n
For Laca, the higher bill has added financial pressure.<\/p>\n
She said she may have to find look for extra work to cover utility costs and prepare for her daughter’s school expenses.<\/p>\n
“Two jobs to find, paying the bills and then get my daughter for her school, things like she needs,” Laca said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) — Some El Pasoans noticed higher electricity bills, some saying it’s the highest charge…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":384552,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[138,32675,140,139],"class_list":["post-384551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-electric","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=384551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384551\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/384552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}