LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) — The Lincoln Electric System’s administrative board voted unanimously Friday to raise rates this summer.
Your utility bill could go up by 4% starting July 1.
Board members said this increase is “urgent” in order to boost energy production.
“The longer that we wait, the less that we will see in terms of savings because the costs are going up so significantly,” board member Chelsea Johnson said.
For the average household, this price hike amounts to around $4 extra per month.
All of the money generated by this increase will go toward an expansion to accommodate for growing demand.
LES will buy 20 megawatts of hydropower from another utility company and will install two new natural gas turbines.
Officials said this will maintain grid reliability and avoid even higher costs later on.
But rates already went up at the beginning of 2025, bringing this year’s total increase to just under 7.5%.
Over the past three years, rates have gone up by more than 16%.
Jason Ball, the president of Lincoln’s Chamber of Commerce, said the chamber agrees with LES’s plan, but hopes the price hikes can be better handled moving forward.
“We would ask LES to consider creating a longer-term rate growth strategy that mitigates some of these larger increases that we’ve seen after about a period of five years of zero or slightly negative growth,” he said.
LES said this rate increase will generate $6.5 million for the expansion by the end of the year.
But the city council has to approve the proposal before the new rates can go into effect.