Montana Supreme Court Denies $1.4 Million Electricity Rate Increase For Northwestern Energy
After three years, the Montana Supreme Court has sided with the Montana Public Service Commission’s decision to reject NorthWestern Energy’s request to raise electricity fees. Communications Director Eric Sell has details.
“In 2012, there was an outage at the Dave Gates Generation Station and that was one of NorthWestern Energy’s power plants in Montana,” said Sell. “ As a result of that outage, NorthWestern Energy had to purchase electricity from third parties. What they had done is they requested that the commission allow them to recover those market purchases through rates and charge rate payers for that electricity.”
According to Sell, that equaled to about $1.4 million and the commission denied that request.
“Back in August of 2015, Judge Brad Newman down in Butte had upheld the commission’s decision,” Sell said. “NorthWestern Energy appealed that decision to the Montana Supreme Court. On Tuesday, the Montana Supreme Court voted unanimously to uphold the Montana PSC’s denial of that $1.4 million rate increase request from NorthWestern.”
NorthWestern Energy’s customers were refunded back in 2012, but the Supreme Court’s decision insures that that $1.4 million remains out of rates and rate payers won’t have to pay that again.