UPDATE 1-California PUC allows rate hike for So Cal Edison
(Recasts, updates with comments from commissioners, consumer advocate, more details, background; adds byline)
LOS ANGELES, March 12 (Reuters) - Southern California Edison customers will see their bills rise by an average of about 2 percent in 2009 under a rate increase approved by the state utility regulator on Thursday in a 4-1 vote.
The three-year general rate case also allows a 1 percent rate increase in 2010 and 2011 for SCE, a unit of Edison International (EIX.N) based in the Los Angeles suburb of Rosemead.
Consumer groups opposed the rate hike as too steep, but SCE employees and some church and community groups spoke in favor of it, saying it would boost employment in California.
The California Public Utilities Commission approved SCE collecting $4.83 billion in authorized base revenue for 2009.
Cal PUC President Michael Peevey said this will raise by 6 percent the base rate, which supplies about 36 percent of total revenues to SCE, California's No. 2 electric utility by customer count of 4.85 million.
The vote allows a 29 percent increase over the 2006 authorized revenue requirement of $3.75 billion, and a 19.3 percent hike over SCE's 2006 recorded base revenue requirement of $4.1 billion. It is also a 7.8 percent decrease from SCE's requested 2009 revenue requirement of $5.2 billion.
The revenue requirement is $5 billion in 2010 and $5.25 billion in 2011. Projected 2009 revenue is $12.5 billion.
The lone dissenter, Commissioner Dian Grueneich, said the rate hike was too much during "an economic crisis we have not seen since the Great Depression."
She backed a smaller rate hike that was supported by an administrative law judge.
That proposal suggested a $4.65 billion base rate increase of 2009, the test year of the three-year rate case. The judge, and Grueneich, said that would have given SCE enough money to keep the lights on reliably.
Mindy Spratt of consumer advocate The Utility Reform Network, said the Cal PUC had "sentenced consumers in Southern California to higher electric rates, ignoring evidence that the increases requested by SCE were unnecessary and excessive.
"The decision will cost customers over $2 billion," compared to $1.3 billion in the judge's proposal over three years, said Spratt. She also disputed Edison's claims that it would add 38,000 jobs through spending funded by the rate hike.
Peevey said an average customer with an $85 monthly bill will see a rise to about $87 per month, and the poorest of Edison's customers will have no increase.
DELAYED INFRASTRUCTURE WORK Continued...
