As Americans grapple with surging home energy bills, state regulators are starting to take a harder line on utilities proposing to hike household electricity rates.
Regulators in at least three Midwest states are already blocking power companies from taking on costly grid upgrades that rely on consumer rate hikes to foot the bill. Instead, the utilities are being told to delay less urgent projects and absorb some costs they usually pass on to customers. As more and more households struggle with stubbornly high inflation, analysts warn that such regulatory pushback could spread across the country.
“With customer bills rising, you are going to see regulators shine a lot more light on specific spending on projects,” CreditSights utilities analyst Andy DeVries said in an interview. “They are going to be asking: why do they need to spend all of this money?”
