EPHRATA — The public comment period is open for Grant County Public Utility District customers who want to weigh in on proposed 2027 PUD rates. Comments can be made on the PUD website, www.grantpud.org, under the "workshops and meetings" tab. 

Utility district commissioners will hold a public hearing at 2 p.m. Nov. 10 for additional customer response. People can attend the hearing in person at the commission hearing room, 30 C St. SW, Ephrata. Access also will be available online.

The proposed 2027 rates include increases for all customers. The smallest increase, 3.5%, will be paid by residential, small business, irrigation and general service customers. They're designated as "core customers."

"The commission has made it clear that our core customers are the ones that get first rights to Priest Rapids Project power," said Ty Ehrman, PUD senior vice president of retail operations. " Whatever is left over after (core customers) is available to the rest of the customers, industrials and such."

The PUD revised its rate schedule to group remaining customers by the amount of electricity they use. Tier One includes industrial and large industrial businesses, large general service and industrial agriculture. For them the PUD has proposed a 9.5% increase. 

Tier Two customers include data centers, called high-density computing and large high-density computing, along with ag boiler customers and evolving industry customers. They would see a 12.5% rate increase.

Rate increases are driven in part by inflation, but also because the PUD is using all the electricity generated by its own hydroelectric projects.

The PUD operates Priest Rapids and Wanapum dams and is entitled to a percentage of electricity generated by those projects. Demand has reached the point where all of that's allocated, and most of that demand has come from industrial customers, including but not limited to data centers.

Adding more customers, or increasing power to existing customers, requires the PUD to go outside of Grant County and add more power, Ehrman said. 

Jeremy Stewart, manager of rates and pricing, said other power sources are not only more expensive; the cost is projected to increase.

"That's a budget line item that we're estimating in 2026 is going to be about $16.9 million, and in 2030, it's $186 million," Stewart said. "What we've heard from customers is they would like smooth, predictable rate increases as opposed to a situation where they may not have an increase for two years, and they have like a 40 or 60% jump because of that incremental power. So, we're trying to smooth those costs out as well."

Core customers use about 30% of the existing PUD-generated electricity, Ehrman said. 

Utility district revenues for 2026 were above budget projections at the end of August, but Ehrman said revenues are subject to change – sometimes drastic change. 

"We've done a good job of smart financial stewardship. We also have to recognize that there's a certain amount of volatility in parts of our business that we can't predict, so wholesale power prices end up being one of those in some cases," he said. "Other things that contribute to our revenues, things like carbon credits, end up factoring in there too, so there is a natural volatility, and we did end up with some of those factors playing in this year."

However, retail revenues are below budget projections, he said.

"Our customers use less than we anticipated they were going to use, and we ended up short on that side of the box. We can end up with swings in those parts of our business that have a material impact. We had a good year - that's a good thing. Next year may end up being different. We've got to play the average here in our business and make sure that we don't end up shorting ourselves too far year after year and end up in trouble," Ehrman said.

While rates are going up, they're not discouraging businesses from coming to Grant County, Ehrman said, at least not industrial customers. 

"We are not seeing that on the industrial side. In fact, at this point – by far – the biggest factor is how quickly we can get customers connected on the industrial side. The cost of power – not that it's not a factor, but it is not the driving factor. We are still extremely competitive nationwide across all of our rate classes," he said.

Some customer classes are starting to feel the pinch, however.

"We are starting to see some level of pressure with some of the customers that are in the middle section of our customer classes, and we're working on solutions for those right now," Ehrman said. "We've some concern among some of the folks that fit into our large general service, which is the large commercial (businesses), essentially, because they're currently classified as non-core, and that means their rate trajectories are bigger than what they are for core customers, and yet they're not full-on industrial producers. Jeremy and team are working on what we're going to do there, and working with the commission on some solutions."

    A chart showing where Grant County Public Utility District rates compare to state and national utilities. Grant County PUD staff has recommended an increase in rates for 2027.