JPS customers to see increase in light bills Loop Jamaica

Black Immigrant Daily News

Jamaica Public Service (JPS) customers will see an average increase of approximately 0.7 per cent on their bills next month.

This follows the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) assessment of the power company’s 2022 Annual Review and Extraordinary Rate Review application.

Based on the OUR’s analysis, JPS’s proposed adjustment to the rates would have had an average overall impact of two per cent, the regulator said.

Meanwhile, the average increase in the overall rates varies from 0.4 per cent for the very large commercial and industrial customers (RT70) to 1.2 per cent for the large commercial and industrial customers (RT50).

The OUR approved a revenue target of $48.16 billion for 2022, down from the $51.3 billion proposed by JPS.

Summary of the major proposals by JPS and OUR’s approved rates

The 2022 JPS Annual Review application is in keeping with the provisions of the Electricity Licence, 2016, which allows for the realignment of JPS’ revenue targets each year against inflation and exchange rate movements, as well as its performance in the previous year.

Though JPS proposed a heat rate target of 9,791 kJ/kWh, the OUR established the target at 9,495 kJ/kWh. The heat rate indicates the efficiency of JPS’s generation plants, the OUR said.

In its Extraordinary Rate Review submission, JPS requested approval for an additional US$22.5 million capital expenditure for four projects. One of the projects involves the life-extension of 171.5MW of the capacity of existing generation plants until 2026 to avoid widespread outages.

The other three projects target stability and reliability on the grid, particularly in the Corporate Area Energy System (CAES) and the North-Eastern region of the island. The OUR approved all these capital projects. However, they will not be captured in JPS’s revenue requirement until 2023.

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