Starting in February, Atmos Energy and Entergy Mississippi will raise their customers’ rates.
The Mississippi Public Service Commission unanimously approved both rate increases at its meeting Thursday morning.
Atmos’ rates will go up by about $1.47 per month. Entergy customers using 1,000 kilowatt hours per month will pay about $7 more per month.
For Atmos Energy, the increase will allow the utility to recover its ongoing operations and maintenance costs and its investment in new pipes and equipment, Atmos said in a statement.
For Entergy, the utility’s rate increase is due to rising natural gas prices, Mara Hartmann, a spokeswoman for Entergy Mississippi, told Mississippi Today on Thursday.
Hartmann said the utility last year carried out two large rate decreases due to very, very low natural gas prices.
Because 65 percent of Entergy’s electricity is generated using natural gas, and natural gas prices have started to rise, it affects the utility’s rates, she said.
Sam Britton, public-service commissioner for the Southern District, said most of these rate increases have to do with the fluctuating cost of fuel that powers ratepayers’ homes and businesses.
“As the cost of natural gas changes, we will definitely see changes in rates,” Britton said. “Whatever the fuel charges are, usually they just flow straight through (to customers), so there’s really no profit or loss to the companies.”
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Entergy customers using 1,000 kilowatts per hour would pay about $7 more per month and that the utility’s rate increase was due to unprecedented low natural gas prices.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
Maybe Tate can arrange a Tax cut too.