Rocky Mountain Power has notified state regulators it wants to increase its electricity rates by $67 million beginning in February 2010.

If the power company gets everything it wants, the average Rocky Mountain Power customer will see their annual bill for electricity increase by 4 percent, or approximately $2.70 a month.

Michele Beck, director of the state's Office of Consumer Services that is charged with representing the interests of consumers in rate cases, said at first glance the company's request doesn't seem justified for residential customers.

"Their own cost-of-service studies indicate that residential rates should go up less than one percent," she said. "So that is something that our team of experts will be looking at closely."

Rocky Mountain Power President A. Richard Walje, in a recent meeting with The Salt Lake Tribune's editorial board, explained the utility needs the rate increase to help cover its growing investments in additional power generating facilities and transmission lines.

Such investments are necessary for the company to meet the rising demand for electricity from its 800,000 Utah customers, he said.

Rocky Mountain Power wants to collect its proposed rate increase by raising from $3 to $5.70 its monthly "customer charge," which is a fixed minimum amount that each residential electricity consumer is required to pay the utility to cover such things as the cost of their meter, the power line to their home and the expense of issuing a monthly bill.

Tim Funk, of the Crossroads Urban Center, an organization that serves and represents the interests of low-income Utahns, said increasing the monthly customer service charge could mean big problems for families struggling to pay their bills.

He said raising the monthly customer charge will disproportionately increase the bills of the state's lowest energy users, many of whom are low-income families or individuals trying to get buy on fixed incomes.

"Whenever you raise a fixed charge like that the effect always is felt the most by those who can least afford to pay," Funk said.

In the past three years, Utah's largest power company has received permission three times from state regulators at the Public Service Commission to raise rates by nearly $200 million.

The final $45 million of that $200 million in increases started showing up on customer bills on May 8, several weeks after Rocky Mountain Power already had filed for its next rate hike -- the one now pending at the PSC.

steve@sltrib.com