Electricity cost increases in the third quarter won’t shock customers, although natural gas prices will be slightly higher than last year, according to filings Xcel Energy made with the Colorado Public Utilities Commission on Wednesday.
Electricity costs are expected to rise less than 0.2 percent for residential and small-business customers between the second and third quarters, Xcel Energy said. For the average customer who consumes the same amount of electricity in each quarter, that translates into a dime more on the residential side and 18 cents for small-business users.
Natural gas prices, measured year over year, aren’t so flat. Residential customers can expect to pay 4 percent more for natural gas in the third quarter than they did a year earlier, or about 84 cents more on average.
For small-business customers, gas costs are expected to go up 2 percent, or $1.65, for the quarter, according to Xcel.
Four times a year, the state’s largest utility notifies the PUC of its expected electricity and natural gas commodity costs for the upcoming quarter. Those commodity costs are passed through to Xcel’s 1.4 million customers in the state.
