Get set for shocking Con Ed bills this summer.
Residential rates are expected to climb to about 7.4 percent during peak air-conditioning season this June, July and August, Con Ed said yesterday in a grim forecast.
Apartment dwellers who use 350 kilowatt hours of electricity each month will likely see a bill of $103.28 this summer — a $7.10 increase over last year’s $96.18 bill.
Most of the hike comes from a 4 percent increase Con Ed took in April to cover the increased cost of delivering power to its customers’ homes.
The remaining 3.4 percent comes from the expiration of a discount Con Ed customers got last summer as a refund of earlier overcharges, and from an expected boost in the price of electricity Con Ed buys from generating companies.
It might get far worse: Con Ed’s forecast doesn’t cover electric-generating companies’ demand for a price hike that would zap bills by another 10 percent to 12 percent.
If the generators have their way with federal regulators, New Yorkers — who already pay the steepest power prices charged by any major utility — could end up zapped with bills nearly 20 percent higher than last year.
Con Ed’s forecast yesterday comes with no guarantees. If fuel prices escalate wildly this summer — gasoline prices are already up more than 30 percent over the last year — then its customers might pay even more.
But the company’s prognosticators don’t expect a surge in prices for natural gas, which have held fairly steady this year. Natural gas fuels most of the city’s generating plants.
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