Klamath County, ORE– Pacific Power is asking the Oregon Public Utility Commission to approve a 16.9% residential rate hike, effective next year.
In real dollars, the company says it could cost homeowners about $30 more per month.
To raise $304 million to invest in renewable power sources and upgrades, it says it also needs to pay for costs associated with wildfires such as managing vegetation around power lines and paying higher wildfire insurance premiums.
It’s also looking to create what it’s calling a “catastrophic fire fund.”
PacifiCorp, the utilities parent company is facing several lawsuits over its part in a wildfire that destroyed 170 homes back in 2020, having already agreed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to settle just some of those lawsuits
