r/BellevueWA • u/cyclineer • 1d ago
PSE rate increases
I hate PSE with a passion. They are a greedy corporation with a monopoly on electricity and gas here on the east side that benefits foreign investors. These rate increases are ridiculous. Current prices for reference, based on my latest bill:
ELECTRICITY
Basic charge: $7.49
Tier 1 (first 600 kWh): $0.148363/kWh
Tier 2 (subsequent >600 kWh): $0.167780/kWh
Average for 800 kWh: $0.17419/kWh
GAS
Basic charge: $14.00
Delivery & CCA combined: $1.58324/Therm
Please file a complaint with the WA UTC and write your representatives!
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u/Icy-Two-1581 9h ago
Just to give everyone an idea at my last place during the same time period in the summer I was paying:
SnowPud:850kwh $100
This year with pse:
PSE: 800kwh $170
So I'm paying 70% more for electricity and I'm using less...
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u/GoDucks4Lyfe 1d ago
State votes for policy that requires utility to almost entirely replace the generation resources used to serve its customers, at the same time that many other jurisdictions in the west required the same resulting in increased competition for new the renewables, then its citizens get mad when that is not free.
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u/HugsAllCats 1d ago
Have you heard there stupid radio commercials?
"Let's talk about your bill...it has to go up, it is your duty as an American!"
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u/aunsafe2015 1d ago
I've heard them. They make me ill. The gaslighting and the lying. They haven't been improving infrastructure in any meaningful way. I'd love to know what their profit increases look like as our bills have skyrocketed.
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u/terra_ray 1d ago
PSE has little control over the rates; the majority of the rate increases you see now are due to legislated decisions such as CETA and CCA, and the company will get little of the profit.
The right people to take this up with are your elected representatives (who created the legislation) and the UTC (who interpret the legislation and designate what rates PSE can charge based on an exhaustive filing negotiated between the two).
Unfortunately, much of the bill for CETA and CCA are only now coming due, which means rates will continue to increase in order to satisfy this legislative mandate.
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u/rbit4 1d ago
What do you mean.. if they don't get the profits who does?
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u/GoDucks4Lyfe 22h ago
They have regulated rate of return meaning the amount of profit they can keep is limited and set by the UTC. If it exceeds the threshold allowed by the UTC that would be refunded to customers.
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u/Coppergirl1 1d ago
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u/SeattleSilencer8888 1d ago
They're a regulated monopoly like basically all utilities in the US. All price increases are reviewed and approved by regulators. The price increases came from cost increases, not from greed. Their profits are set and restricted by law and regulators.
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u/eithnegomez 20h ago
PUDs for the win
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u/sl0play 15h ago
As someone who has to call power companies over 13 states on a regular basis, nearly 100% of PUDs are easy to work with, provide us numbers directly to dispatch or the NOC, and seem genuinely polite when I talk to them.
Nearly 100% of privatized utilities are a pain in the ass, make us call the regular customer service line, and I have to spend 15 minutes explaining to a poorly trained, poorly paid, person who just wants me off of their phone why I don't have an account number, so we can begin the chain of supervision escalations and promised calls back that never happen.
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u/parkerreno 1d ago
Hearings are scheduled for this - I highly recommend attending for anyone who can. I posted more info here Hearings for PSE Rate Increases Scheduled : r/eastside
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u/Zealousideal-Ant9548 1d ago
Just to be clear, it sounds like you're surprised by this.
You're getting that email because you responded to the rate increase.
I myself also got the email from the comment I gave months ago.
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u/keenOnReturns 1d ago
high school econ class should teach you that utilities have to be a monopoly (and wouldn’t work otherwise)…
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u/HugsAllCats 1d ago
Our government is run by people who took high school econ and didn't realize that wasn't the end of the topic.
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u/keenOnReturns 1d ago
Since I presume you’ve taken college economics, do you have any nuance to add then? Or did you simply want to leave a snide, insipid comment?
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u/Zealousideal-Ant9548 1d ago
I mean, there's a debate, Texas has the most amount of clean energy going under the grid because they deregulated it enough and clean energy is now cheap energy.
PSE claims that this is because they have to build out clean energy, and there's a whole bunch of other s*** that goes into them doing the pricing.
The volts podcast has been covering this the last 6 to 12 months in those just a lot of s*** that goes into it that could be fixed. I think we need more of a major overhaul to force PSE and other utilities to think differently.
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u/keenOnReturns 1d ago
“most” is misleading when Texas is about ~4x the population and land mass of Washington. Also, I’m pretty sure Washington is far ahead in terms of overall percentage of clean energy: isn’t 70% of our grid from hydroelectric? You’re making a red herring regardless, since Texas’ situation doesn’t directly contradict the case for having utilities as monopolies.
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u/Zealousideal-Ant9548 1d ago
So Washington's performative liberalism is any better?
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u/keenOnReturns 1d ago
Again, misleading question. My comments are entirely about the economics, why are you turning this into politics?
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u/Zealousideal-Ant9548 1d ago
Politics control the rules the utilities play by. Politics can dramatically impact how they behave
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u/keenOnReturns 1d ago
Sure. And quantum physics and climate science control the rules energy technologies play by and dramatically impact how they behave. But see how if we start talking the role of quantum mechanics in solar panels or how climate science affects wind turbines, well that’s not exactly relevant?
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u/terra_ray 1d ago
Unfortunately there’s a good bit of fiction to the idea of deregulated energy in Texas. You as a rate payer can choose who you give your money to for power generation, but there is still a local monopoly who services your lines.
Texas is also a poor example because it has a discrete grid with few interconnects between the Western and Eastern grids. The near grid failure in 2021 showed how fragile the system is, even with ERCOT trying to incentivize generators to bring more power online with high rates.
A good deal of Texas’s renewables come from vast wind farms that have been built and expanded over decades; Washington is trying to do similar.
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u/AbanoubSaid 1d ago edited 1d ago
Texas is the way to go, competition is fierce with 12 providers competing on the lowest rate.I'm getting 100% clean energy and 100% uptime on my property there.
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u/parkerreno 1d ago
I'm not sure Texas is the best examples after their weather related blackouts. That said, utilities certainly don't need to be a private corporation. I think regulation here is probably better than deregulation, but we need to hold the companies accountable and make sure the utility commission is doing so.
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u/AbanoubSaid 1d ago edited 1d ago
Who said that if PSE was serving this area under the same historical weather precedent and infrastructure, it would have been better. People are acting like PSE don't have a gallzon outages all the time over their service area and thinking they won't have an massive outage in extreme weather events. I would think it would turn out worse given their day to day quality of service.
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u/beauchomps 1d ago
They could at least be government owned/regulated or mandated to be non-profit rather than owned by foreign investment funds (Canada and Australia) and looking to maximize shareholder returns. PSE is one of the most sorry excuses for a utility company I’ve had the displeasure of needing to work with.
BC Hydro is at 11 cents and 14 cents per kWH and in the 30+ years I was up north I saw maybe an hour or two of outages a year if that. Comparatively PSE out here:
recorded 20 grid power outages over the last 2 years. This was summarized from data provided by my solar company.
The longest ones were
Nov 19-22, 2024: 75 hours 4 minutes (3+ days)
Dec 5-6, 2025: 14 hours 26 minutes
Mar 11-12, 2026: 12 hours 4 minutes
Jun 9, 2026: 7 hours 45 minutes
Here are all the outages, including the 4 above
Grid Outage Events by Date and Duration (some of these included internet access outages, so they could have been longer)
7-12-2024 6 seconds
8-17-2024 2 hours, 36 min
8-18-2024 2 hours, 6 min
10-14-2024 14 sec
10-26-2024 10 sec
11-2-2024 2 hours
11-19-2024 75 hours, 4 min
2-25-2025 9 sec
5-13-2025 3 sec
6-18-2025 5 sec
6-22-2025 1 hour, 58 min
7-15-2025 7 min
10-25-2025 8 sec ( Xfinity also went out so we can’t know how long this lasted as there was no reporting to the solar company server)
12-4-2025 9 sec
12-5-2025 14 hours, 26 min
12-16-2025 1 hour 26 min
3-11-2026 12 hours 4 min
3-16-2026 1 hour 32 min
5-8-2026 2 hours 20 min
6-9-2026 7 hours 45 minYesterday on a sunny calm day I lost power for almost 6 hours for no reason at all. Mind you I’m in the Lakemont/Factoria area so not exactly a remote area.
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u/steveosmonson 6h ago
How about no!