Entergy to decrease bills
Entergy Arkansas’ low-cost power generation portfolio, along with lower gas prices last year, has allowed the company to decrease customer bills beginning with the April billing cycle.
An average residential customer using 1,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per month will see a decrease of $10.01 in their total bills — a 7.49% decrease. Commercial and industrial customers could see anywhere from a 1.6% to 17.7% decrease, depending on their customer usage profile, according to a news release.
The decrease was prompted by a lower fuel rate, known as the Energy Cost Recovery Rider (ECR), which is adjusted and passed on to customers. The redetermined ECR rate will decrease from $0.01883 per kWh to $0.00882 per kWh — the lowest it has been in more than a decade.
Each year, the fuel rate adjusts either up or down, depending on changes in the cost of fuel used by Entergy Arkansas to generate electricity and wholesale prices paid for additional electricity. The new rate is effective until March of 2025, unless an interim adjustment is needed. It is reflected in the “Fuel and Purchased Cost” line item on monthly bills.
More than 71% of the total energy production in 2023 came from clean nuclear energy, while natural gas powered about 15% of our total energy production in 2023. In addition to Entergy Arkansas’ three solar facilities currently in operation — Stuttgart, Chicot and Searcy — another 530 megawatts of new solar generation will be coming online this year — Walnut Bend (100 MW), West Memphis (180 MW) and Driver Solar (250 MW). Construction of another 400 MW of solar expected to be completed next year.
The new ECR rate includes recovery of cost shifting from Entergy Arkansas net-metering customers. In this year’s ECR calculations, Entergy Arkansas included $8.9 million in costs, which are being shifted to all customers because of private net-metering installations. Notably, these costs are only a portion of the overall costs that have been shifted to other customers as a result of net-metering.