TRUMP’S TAX LAW LED TO LOWER ELECTRICITY RATES. BUT HOW MUCH HAVE CONSUMERS REALLY SAVED?

From PublicIntegrity.org, March 7, 2019 (excerpts)

…Utility bills have dropped, but by a negligible amount, ranging from less than a dollar a month for the average residential customer in Hawaii to about $14 for the same group in Florida, according to a sample of individual company announcements reviewed by the Center for Public Integrity….

Electricity savings for customers have varied widely from company to company. For most customers, the initial savings on energy bills last year were about 3 or 4 percent on average, according to Americans for Tax Reform, a conservative anti-tax group run by Grover Norquist which boasts of the lower rates it says resulted from the tax law.

One of the smallest decreases was in Hawaii, where the average retail energy price is the highest in the United States. Savings from the tax law allowed Hawaiian Electric Company to cancel a planned rate increase and to minimally decrease rates. An Oahu customer’s average monthly bill dropped 76 cents, less than a 1 percent reduction.

Customers for Hawaiian Electric’s sister company, Hawaiian Electric Light, saw a $4.97 average drop in their monthly bill.

Duke Energy customers near Orlando, Florida, who were affected by Hurricane Irma, avoided a rate hike. They can thank the tax law for doing away with an average monthly increase of $5.20 on their bills over three years to pay for repairing hurricane damage to the network.

In Louisiana — a state with the highest per capita energy use and among the highest poverty rates in the nation — the 1.08 million customers that receive their electricity from Entergy Corp., which serves much of southern and northeastern Louisiana, received roughly $4.20 a month in savings on average in 2018….

read … Lower Electric rates