Updates

February 2025 UPDATE: The IURC approved a rate hike that will happen over two steps. For the first step, electric bills will increase by $11.18 per month for the average residential customer, while the 22% of CenterPoint customers who are residential-transitional will see their electric bills increase by $20.66 per month. 

The second step of this rate hike will hit customer bills in early 2026. Although we don’t have an exact estimate yet, we expect this second step increase to be substantial. CenterPoint claims that the overall increase will be $26/month, but CAC has not been provided with enough information to verify this number.

Specifically, the IURC:

• Approved a $80.0 million (11.1%) increase in CenterPoint’s annual revenue requirement. CenterPoint initially requested a $118.8 million (16.02%) increase, then modified it to $115.4 million. 

• Approved a decrease in CenterPoint’s ROE/profit, from 10.4% to 9.8%. 

Although CAC is disappointed in the large rate increase, we are glad the Commission approved:

• Capping the security deposit at  $50 for Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) customers 

• Waiving the after-hours remote reconnection charge of $54.19 once per year for LIHEAP customers

• Ceasing residential disconnections on Fridays (in addition to the current prohibitions on Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays)

• Waiving the residential late payment charge at the customer’s request once per year

• Reducing the proposed remote reconnection fee to $3 (from its current level of $44, and compared to the $40 level proposed in the rate case)

• Increasing the current disconnection protection for Medical Need (10 days) or Life Support (20 days) to 30 days for both categories. Prior to disconnection, CEI South will place a collection call to prompt the customers to establish an installment plan.

• Providing line items on customer bills that break out the service charge, variable charges, Fuel Adjustment Clause, sales tax, and total

• Preventing CenterPoint from earning a profit on all of its cloud computing costs 

The IURC Rejected the Following CAC Proposals:

• Creating a new Affordable Power Rider to provide bill discounts to income-qualified customers and help make electric bills more affordable for customers with the greatest affordability challenges

• Forcing CenterPoint shareholders to pay the costs of trade association dues and the costs of this rate case (such as the costs of its outside attorneys and expert witnesses)

• Making non-residential customers pay their fair share of the costs

• Preventing CenterPoint from raising the residential fixed monthly charge through trackers. (CenterPoint is the only utility that has received permission to include a fixed charge component of its TDSIC tracker.)

• Eliminating card payment fees (surcharges you pay when you make a bill payment using a credit card).

JULY 2024 UPDATE: In May 2024, a settlement was proposed in this case, to which CAC is opposed. The settlement was agreed to only by a handful of large corporations (CenterPoint Energy, SABIC Innovative Plastics, and the CenterPoint industrial customers, which include Consolidated Grain & Barge; CountryMark Refining and Logistics, LLC; Marathon Petroleum Company; and Toyota Motor Manufacturing of Indiana, Inc.).

In July 2024, CAC filed testimony in the case urging the IURC to reject the settlement. If the IURC approves the settlement as filed, the average CenterPoint residential customer using 799 kWh would see a monthly bill increase from $154.02 to $189.05, an increase of $35.03 (22.74%).

MARCH 2024 UPDATE: CAC filed testimony in the CenterPoint Electric rate case, making numerous recommendations to the IURC intended to mitigate the impact of this obscene proposal on captive ratepayers.

CAC's recommendations include that the IURC do the following:

• Dismiss this rate case and direct CenterPoint to refile a rate case in the near future that includes appropriate consideration of ratepayer affordability.
• Direct CenterPoint to freeze or curtail non-essential spending and investments until it can present an adequate plan demonstrating a pathway toward more affordable ratepayer bills.
• Order a management audit of CenterPoint to identify additional efficiencies and opportunities to reduce costs, examine leadership decision-making processes and incentives, and identify reforms to ensure ratepayer affordability is appropriately prioritized by management and incorporated into decisions.
• Disallow a return “of” or “on” utility plant that is no longer used and useful or otherwise not in the public interest or resulting in just and reasonable rates.
• Make additional adjustments to revenue requirement to remove items such as a portion of CenterPoint management employee compensation.
• Reduce CenterPoint’s authorized Return on Equity (ROE), or profit. 

If CenterPoint gets what they want in this rate case, the average customer will see monthly electric bills increase by a shocking $47.24 (30.7%) by 2026.

The impact is even more egregious for the 22% of CenterPoint customers who are electric heating customers (Rate EH), who will see their average monthly bill increase by $63.33 by 2026.

CenterPoint proposes phasing in their desired new rates in three steps, taking place in Fall 2024, early 2025 and early 2026.

The sheer amount of this increase - nearly $50/month - is particularly disturbing because CenterPoint Electric customers have paid the highest electric bills in Indiana since 2008. 

Formerly known as Vectren, the monopoly electric utility in Southwest Indiana was purchased for $6 billion in 2019 by CenterPoint Energy, Inc., a Houston-based energy holding company with over 7 million customers in 8 states. 

In this case, Cause Number 45990, CenterPoint Electric is asking the IURC for permission to increase base rates by $118.8 million (16.02%). 

As part of this rate hike, CenterPoint also wants to force you to pay a monthly fixed charge of $23.20 before you even use any electricity – a 114% increase.

High monthly fixed charges disproportionately impact low- and fixed-income households (seniors, people with disabilities, homes with children, and other vulnerable populations), and penalize households that conserve energy and make their homes more efficient. 

CenterPoint Wants Residential Customers to Subsidize Industrial Customers

In this case, CenterPoint Electric is proposing to spread out its total costs across different types of customers (residential, commercial, industrial) using a cost allocation method that forces residential customers to pay a much higher share of CenterPoint’s costs than they should, and lets big industrial customers pay much less than they should.