![Dominion Energy bills increase on July 1, 2017 [Image:commons.wikipedia.org]](https://staticr1.blastingcdn.com/media/photogallery/2017/7/1/660x290/b_502x220x82/dominion-energy-bills-increase-on-july-1-2017-imagecommonswikipediaorg_1419455.jpg "Dominion Energy bills increase on July 1, 2017 [Image:commons.wikipedia.org]")
According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch on Thursday, customers of Dominion Energy Virginia will pay more for their electricity effective Saturday, July 1.
Back in May when Dominion Virginia Power changed its name to Dominion Energy, it promised its customers that rates would not go up to pay for the changes the company made to redesign their 7,300 trucks, employees' uniforms, hard hats, badges, the company logo, letterheads, stationery and every other thing associated with the company.
When customers heard the news that their rates were increasing, they immediately remembered the promise of the no rate increase.
However, that was before they knew the entire story about the increase.
Increase
It is not Dominion Energy's fault that everyone's bill are increasing. The increase was a decision made by the State Corporation Commission (SCC) on Thursday, June 29. The SCC made the decision because of the fuel factor. That's the part of the electric bill that pays for fuel used by Dominion to generate electricity.
That fuel rate used to be only 1.971 cents per kilowatt-hour. However, it increased on Saturday to 2.383 cents per kilowatt hour. That means customers will pay an increase of $4.12 in their monthly bill for every 1,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity. The increase will be higher if more than 1,000 kilowatt-hours are used.
Typically, there will be a 3.6 percent increase in everybody's monthly bill.
To simplify this, customers will not be paying more for electricity, they will be paying more for the fuel used to generate the electricity they use. Even with the increase, there is some good news that might come in a couple of months.
Decrease
The State Corporation Commission is proposing to recover some of the increase by reducing the monthly bill by $2.07.
If that proposal is approved, it would become effective on September 1, 2017. That means the $4.12 increase would be effective for only two months, July and August. In essence, each household would pay just $2.05 more than it was already paying for the July 1 increase. That would be good news for residential customers.
At first, the increase seemed bad.
After learning about the proposed decrease, it doesn't seem so bad. The way it seems is that by the time the increase kicks in, the decrease will be right behind it if approved.
Dominion Energy is headquartered in Richmond, Virginia, but it supplies electricity not only to Virginia but also to North Carolina. It also supplies natural gas to North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia.
