Austin Energy<\/a> portion of the average bill is set to decrease by about $5, but a typical Austin utility user will see increases of $8.71 for Austin Water, $2.90 for Austin Resource Recovery (trash), $8.04 for Austin Watershed Protection (drainage), $2.06 for the Transportation User Fee and 10 cents for the Code Compliance charge.<\/p>\nAustin Energy credits decreasing electricity costs for the cheaper electricity bills, but infrastructure costs are skyrocketing, utility spokesman Matt Mitchell said. Austin Energy\u2019s base rate and fees will increase to cover the increased input costs, but the dropping cost of power itself will offset rising expenses to create an overall decrease.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile inflation has increased by about 5% year-over-year, we’ve seen increases in electrical equipment and components go up between 100 and 200% in cost,\u201d Mitchell said, adding that similar rate increases have impacted utilities across Texas.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mitchell said Austin Energy is facing a budget shortfall next year and the 5% increase to the utility\u2019s base rate is part of a 5-year plan to close the gap and recoup costs. The base rate factors in the costs to operate \u201cthe poles and trucks and wires and everything that it takes to run the utility,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are a not-for-profit, cost-based utility. It’s incumbent upon us to recover the costs of being a public power entity,\u201d Mitchell said.<\/p>\n
Widespread billing error not related to rate hike<\/p>\n
Mitchell said a recent billing error that resulted in thousands of customers receiving duplicate bills with discrepant balances was not related to rate changes and has since been resolved.<\/p>\n
About 12,000 Austin utility customers received the errant bills in recent weeks, including Paul Williams, who lives in North Austin. Williams received his usual utility bill on Oct. 20. Then last week, he received a second bill showing he owed $753 dollars more. He was confused.<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
\u201cI got something, and it’s another bill, but I’m not supposed to be getting a bill,\u201d Williams said. \u201cIt was identical in almost every respect to the first bill, except for the amount due.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then, on Tuesday, Williams received a letter from the city notifying him of the mistake.<\/p>\n
\u201cTwo billing statements were recently mailed to you in error \u2014 one correct and one incorrect,\u201d the letter reads. \u201cWe apologize for any confusion regarding these two bills.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mitchell said the mix-up was isolated and caused by a software test as Austin Energy \u2014 which handles billing for city utilities \u2014 upgrades its systems this month.<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
\u201cAs part of that upgrade, we are running tests on different groups of customers,\u201d Mitchell said. \u201cFor some reason, that particular instance \u2014 which we’ve not been able to duplicate after that, by the way \u2014 printed two sets of bills, causing understandable confusion.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mitchell said any customer that overpaid because of the issue will receive a bill credit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Linemen work on electric power distribution lines on East 7th Street in Austin on Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2025.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41121,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,251,27],"class_list":["post-41120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-local-news","tag-texas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41120","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=41120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}