Puget Sound Energy

John Ryan reports.

By its third year, the proposal would cost a typical PSE customer an extra $600 a year.

The utility says it's needed to build more power plants as demand increases.

Environmentalists and low-income advocates are opposing the rate hike and PSE's plan to build more gas power plants.

Victor Zertucci is an attorney with Earthjustice.

There are cheaper and cleaner alternatives that are available to the company.

And your utility rates may be going up soon.

Puget Sound Energy wants to raise electricity rates by more than 15% next year and natural gas rates by more than 14%.

State regulators have yet to approve the rate hikes.

They're taking public comments in person tomorrow evening in Lacey, near the state capitol.

the challenge becomes become i mean think of how many lenders out there really are quite petrified of the energy sector right so they haven't even done it or they've declined things um because it didn't fit their box now do you really think they're gonna all go out and all of a sudden change what they're doing because of this.

I got so excited and I just started calling Puget Sound Energy and every big major energy company.

No, it's not going to change jack.

I mean, I get it.

You know, the other day I saw you do a post on social media, and I follow Todd on a regular basis.

Um, and it was a very important one because he pointed out that when it comes to Puget Sound Energy, uh, they, they had created a presentation that said, "This is what state government and local government is asking us to do, and this is what our customers say we care about." And the two aren't even close, are they?

No.

And in fact, um, Puget Sound Energy is going through something that is a little bit unique to them, but basically all utilities have to do, which is plan for the future.

How are they gonna have enough electricity? How are they gonna, you know, keep costs low? Um, and there are a lot of state laws now that apply to them about how to do that.

And what they pointed out is that the state basically wants them to do lots of distributed solar, which is very expensive, and large industrial scale batteries, um, to store that solar, uh, when it's not available.

It's going to be really expensive if that doesn't get under control.

Didn't the legislature vote to allow for another huge percentage increase in PSE? I think it's like 20% or something like that.

They want everything under electric so they can charge it under electric.

It's predatory.

I got this just as the show started.

I got an auto text from Puget Sound Energy, okay? I mean, this feels like, it feels like it's not a coincidence.

It says, crews from PSE will be in your area within the next month to perform routine power pole inspections.

This maintenance work is required so PSE can ensure continued safety and electrical service of reliability.

Now 39 cities, everybody wants their power back on first.

And we always tried to have the major provider in that area is Puget Sound Energy.

Representatives in the Emergency Operations Center, ideally before we've had that for a forecasted storm and then throughout the storm response, So we have that close coordination.

So is that the place you'd like to be? Is that the community operations center? And ideally, I think the state for a really big event or at a county level for smaller events.