Megan Wittman, megan.wittman@sierraclub.org
Ashwaubenon, WISCONSIN – Today, the Wisconsin Public Service Commission (PSC) will host a public hearing on Wisconsin Public Service’s (WPS) proposed rate increases. WPS has proposed a 20% residential increase over two years, a 14.3% increase in 2025 and a 5.2% increase in 2026. The rate increases, if approved, would impact 460,000 residential customers in northeastern and north central Wisconsin.
WPS additionally wants to continue to operate a financially-failing unit at its Weston coal plant, located near Wausau, and is asking for millions of dollars to operate Weston Unit 3 through 2026. Between 2018 and 2020 and again in 2023, Weston 3 had a negative all-in margin of total costs compared to its market energy and capacity value. The unit has been uncompetitive in the energy market, was inoperative due to forced outages more than a quarter of the time in 2023, and had an overall capacity factor of only 19% in 2023.
WPS is now planning to retire Weston Unit 3 in 2031 and convert Weston 4 to methane gas (or what the industry calls ‘“natural” gas’) in 2027, but has never done any economic modeling to determine whether Unit 3 should be retired earlier, or whether it should retire (rather than convert) Unit 4. With its rate increases, WPS seeks to make customers pay for unreliable Weston. New methane gas plans are additionally inconsistent with reliability goals, as a recent study found that gas plants are the most unreliable energy source during extreme weather events– something Wisconsin experiences frequently.
“Once again corporate polluters are trying to make customers foot the bill of their poor decisions,” said Cassie Steiner, Senior Campaign Coordinator. “As Weston ages, the plant is increasingly unreliable and costs more to operate. When there are more affordable, reliable and clean energy solutions available, why should customers have to pay for WPS’ poor decisions to keep Weston open? This plant is archaic. WPS must justify these costs to the PSC and the public and should conduct an integrated resource plan to make sure it is providing reliable service to its customers at the lowest cost to both their wallets and their health.”
We Energies and Wisconsin Public Service, both owned by WEC Energy Group, are requesting a $800 million rate increase over the next two years. We Energies and Wisconsin Public Service also have $2 billion of new methane gas plant proposals in front of the Public Service Commission, indicating that customers will likely face even more rate increases in the coming years to pay for these fossil fuels.
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