DPU Announces Drop In Upcoming Gas Charges

COUNTY News:

Natural gas customers of the Los Alamos Department of Public Utilities (DPU) will see a drop in their gas charges on their upcoming bills as the department has collected the full amount intended under its temporary gas recovery charge.

The $0.44/therm charge was a sunsetting mechanism to cover a $2.2 million shortfall that occurred when commodity gas costs spiked from December 2022 through February 2023.

This charge was approved by the Los Alamos County Council last March and DPU began billing it in April.

“Our cycle 10 customers will be the first to notice the recovery charge has dropped off their bills this month,” DPU Deputy Utility Manager Karen Kendall said. “This was the first group of customers charged the rate last April and the now first group to see it go away.”

DPU charges natural gas customers a fixed service fee each month and a variable commodity rate based on gas consumption. The variable portion is updated on the 8th of each month and is posted online at ladpu.com/GasRateNow.

The variable rate is made up of two parts:

• A fixed consumption charge of $0.27/therm for residential and commercial customers is the portion of the rate that covers DPU’s gas maintenance and operations expenses; and
• A variable cost of gas rate, which changes monthly depending on DPU’s cost to purchase and deliver natural gas to its customers, is sometimes referred to as the “pass-through” portion of the rate. This variable portion allows actual costs to be passed along to the customers. Like the fixed consumption charge above, it is charged per therm of gas consumption.

The natural gas total consumption charge per therm for March 2024 for residential and commercial customers is $0.38/therm, which includes the fixed portion of $0.27/therm and the pass-through portion of $0.11/therm. Under the adopted natural gas rate ordinance, $0.11/therm is the lowest allowable pass-through rate.

The full calculation for the variable cost of gas rate is available at ladpu.com/rates under “Natural Gas”.