BPA won't add second hike in rates
Cash reserves sufficient to make payment
Bert Caldwell - Staff writer
The Bonneville Power Administration will not add a second rate increase to the 46 percent hike that takes effect Oct. 1, spokesman Ed Mosey said Thursday.
Bonneville, which sells electricity generated by federal dams in the Northwest, as well as the region's only nuclear power, had suggested that weakened cash flow might compromise its ability to continue making payments on its debt to the U.S. Treasury.
Mosey said agency officials estimate negative cash flow for the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30 will reach $350 million.
If that figure was to reach $386 million, he said, Bonneville would have to raise rates again to assure financial reserves would be sufficient to make the annual $730 million debt payment.
Customers -- not Bonneville -- had estimated the the additional increase might be 5 percent, Mosey said.
Bonneville, like most other utilities in the West, has been forced to buy high-priced electricity in wholesale markets to offset poor streamflows, which have drastically reduced hydrogeneration.
The agency sells about one-half of all electricity consumed in the Northwest.
Many of the utilities that buy Bonneville's power have announced rate increases that will pass the higher cost on to customers.