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By Sheena Roszell

Local residents seeing a jump in utility bills

Mar 11, 2019 | 3:09 PM

Grande Prairie experienced record setting cold weather in the beginning of the year and now people are noticing their utility bills are on the rise.

Geoff Scotton, Senior Communications Advisor with the Alberta Utilities Commission, says their office received some calls from concerned consumers in the Grande Prairie area last week.

“I’d be reluctant to go into the details of calls from individual rate payers since they’re specific to those ratepayers’ circumstances.  I can tell you people were concerned about the level of their bills and we did discuss with them steps they can take and avenues they can pursue.”

He adds there is nothing unique about this area that would make bills higher than usual during cold weather. January was cold and last month was the second coldest February in the past 50 years, which put consumption up.

“The other factor that’s sort of at play here is the price of natural gas is relatively low. It’s sort of close to record lows, so with that type of circumstance the fixed charges or largely fixed charges around distribution may seem higher than they might otherwise, because the price of energy is so low.” 

Distribution charges are the costs for the utility to be able to deliver the service to the consumer.  These charges don’t fluctuate an enormous amount based on consumption. 

“In essence, the charge is there because the cost of having the distribution network in place does not vary very much according to how much energy is consumed.  The wires still have to be there going to the house and the natural gas distribution network still has to be there to provide gas to the home 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, whether or not the energy is consumed and really it doesn’t vary a great deal according to what amount of energy is consumed.”

Scotton says if people have concerns with their bills, their first step should be to contact their utility provider. They may also want to contact the Utilities Consumer Advocate and if they’re looking for ways to save on their bill, Energy Efficiency Alberta can be a good source of information. 

ATCO is the distribution company for the region and has specifics on their website.

by Sheena Roszell