Effective June 1, PPL Electric Utilities’ price to compare will be higher for residential customers and lower for small businesses.

The new price to compare for residential customers will increase to 8.2 cents per kilowatt-hour, up from 7.2 cents per kilowatt-hour currently. For small business customers, the new price to compare will decrease to 7.7 cents per kilowatt-hour, down from the current 10.8 cents per kilowatt-hour.

A full list of PPL Electric Utilities’ new rates for all rate classes can be found online.

The total increase in an electric bill for non-shopping residential customers using 1,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity a month will be $7. For non-shopping commercial customers using the same amount of power, their electric bill will go down by $34.

Like other electric utilities in the state, PPL Electric Utilities adjusts its generation rates and prices to compare for residential and small business customers every three months to reflect the cost of power purchases and adjustments based on customer use in the prior period. The company’s price to compare is updated on March 1, June 1, Sept. 1 and Dec. 1 each year.

PPL Electric Utilities encourages customers to explore their options for generation supply, shop for the supplier that can best meet their needs and possibly save by shopping with competitive electric suppliers.

A list of state-licensed suppliers and their offer prices are available from the Public Utility Commission’s website. About 60 suppliers serve the residential market in PPL Electric Utilities’ service area.

PPL Electric Utilities does not profit on the generation portion of customers’ bills. It merely passes along the cost of that supply to customers without markup. PPL Electric Utilities’ primary focus is on electric delivery, billing and customer service.

More than 622,000 PPL Electric Utilities customers, or 44 percent of the utility’s customers, have already shopped and obtain their power from other suppliers. More than 70 percent of the total amount of energy delivered by PPL Electric Utilities comes from alternative suppliers, including almost all power used by large commercial and industrial customers.

The price to compare is made up of two components – the generation supply charge and the transmission service charge.

For residential customers, the generation supply charge increased from 6.5 cents per kWh to 7.3 cents per kWh. For small commercial and industrial customers, the generation supply charge decreased from 9.5 cents per kWh to 6.9 cents per kWh.  The change reflects the company’s costs to buy power for non-shopping customers.

The transmission service charge increased from 0.687 cents per kWh to 0.911 cents per kWh for residential customers. For small business customers, the new charge will be 0.817 cents per kWh, down from the current 1.294 per kWh which includes a collection credit.

The transmission service charge is adjusted annually on June 1.  Transmission rates cover the transmission owners’ costs to build, operate and maintain transmission facilities.

The new rates reflect the more than $300 million that is being invested this year to complete or begin projects to strengthen the company’s transmission system, the backbone of the delivery network that moves bulk electricity across the regional power system to local communities.

The components of the price to compare make up about 65 percent of the typical residential monthly bill for non-shopping customers. The price to compare does not include distribution charges, which apply to all customers and cover the company’s costs to deliver power and provide customer service.

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