Central Maine Power Customers To See Mammoth Rate Increase

For the second year in a row, most CMP customers will be facing a very noticeable rate increase.

According to the KJ, the new Central Maine Power “standard offer” supply rates for residential and for small business customers will increase by just under 50%.  The new rates, which will go into effect on January 1st, 2023, will increase the rate from just under 12 cents per kilowatt hour to a whopping 17.6 cents per kilowatt hour!

The article explains that the rates for Versant Power’s Maine Public District will increase as well, but not as much.  For Versant, a company that operates mostly in the northern part of the state, the rates for home and small business customers will change from 11.8 cents per kilowatt hour to 14.9 cents per kilowatt hour.

On Wednesday, the new rates were approved by the Maine Public Utilities Commission.    The new rates are from an annual competitive bidding process that seeks the best deals from large power generators.  Neither CMP nor Versant actually produce the electricity.  They purchase from companies that generate it, for the best price possible, and deliver it to customers.

According to the article, the "standard offer" is described as the:

default supply for homes and small businesses that don’t sign contracts with a licensed competitive energy provider

About 90% of customers are on the standard offer and will, therefore, be affected by this rate increase.

It is also important to note that the 17.6 cents is just for the power itself, CMP charges an additional 9.4 cents for delivery.  So, as of January 1st, the average customer will pay 27 cents per kilowatt hour.

Considering how we have seen the price of everything, especially energy, increase this is not really all that surprising.  Of course, these rate increases are not isolated to Maine.  They are happening everywhere in the country.  Some states are feeling it way worse than Maine.  Massachusetts, for example, is facing a rate of just under 25 cents per kilowatt hour (plus the delivery cost)!