Bellevue, WA-based Puget Sound Energy (PSE) filed with Washington state regulators Monday to lower its overall retail natural gas rates 17.1% this winter — the second gas rate decrease this year. The latest decrease would be effective Oct. 1, and it follows a 1.8% drop in gas charges that went into effect June 1.

A pair of separate requests also filed Monday would cause slight increases to gas and electric retail customers of the combination utility. One request relates to a lowering of the credit retail and small farm electricity customers get from the federal Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) as passed through to PSE for customers of private-sector utilities in the Pacific Northwest. A second request is tied to the true-up of a periodic rate adjustment for both electricity and natural gas customers that supports the utility low-income assistance program. The two separate rate changes will not affect the gas cost adjustment and lowering of the monthly gas utility bills.

Regarding the major gas changes, PSE filed a purchased gas adjustment (PGA) with the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission (WUTC) — its second PGA filing this year — asking to drop the average residential customer’s monthly bill 16%, or nearly $15, to $78.30. That is about the average monthly amount PSE residential customers were paying in 2005, a utility spokesperson said.

PSE CEO Stephen Reynolds said his utility is experiencing “the lowest wholesale natural gas prices in several years,” which he attributed to “decreased demand and ample supplies in the current economy.”

The WUTC mandates the PGA mechanism to allow the state’s natural gas utilities to periodically adjust rates up or down to reflect changes in the wholesale price of natural gas. The utility stressed that it is financially neutral toward the gas cost adjustments.

In the other two WUTC filings, the BPA residential credit was decreased earlier this year, resulting in a $1.86 monthly reduction for average PSE residential customers, lowering the credit to $7.27/month from its current $9.14/month. That effectively helps to raise the monthly power bills of those PSE customers.

On the low-income assistance adjustment, both gas and electric customers receive a mild increase of about a penny/ month. That is how much the truing up will cause both gas and electric rates to rise.

PSE’s spokesperson noted that Monday’s filings are separate from the utility’s general rate case filed last May to begin an 11-month review of what PSE called moderate general rate hikes collectively totaling $175.2 million for its gas and electric utility customers. That request asked for a 2.5% increases in natural gas retail rates and 7.4% in electric rates.

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