Raymond Sandoval is the director of Corporate Communications for PNM, New Mexico's largest electricity provider. PNM services more than 500,000 residential and business customers across the state.
The company asked permission to increase its rates, which hasn't been done since 2019.
"Any time that we do a rate increase, we have to ask the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission for permission to do that," Sandoval told KOAT recently. "The last time that we saw a rate increase was in 2016, and the last time that rates were increased was 2019."
Customers also commented on the situation.
"Maybe a marginal increase that we've seen before," Mike Degidio, a PNM customer in Albuquerque, told KOAT. "Usually in the summertime [it] gets a little bit more pricey. It's kind of scary, and you do bite the bullet and do refrigerated air just to stay out of the element, but you're going to be paying more to power the unit."
Sandoval noted that price increases can have a number of causes, including customer usage, delays in solar projects, supply chain issues, and also higher natural gas and coal costs.
"Our highest demand actually comes between July and [the end of] September," he said. "We have enough capacity to create more energy, than what the highest point that we need. So traditionally, that's been about a 13% cushion. By extending San Juan unit four, we've been able to maintain a cushion of about 12%, so only a 1% difference."
