CEO Letter
To our customers,
Puget Sound Energy’s overriding objective has always been to help keep our customers’ rates in check while ensuring that their utility service remains safe and reliable, long-term. To that end, the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission twice this year approved our requests to decrease natural gas rates by a total of nearly 18 percent. These rate reductions reflect a welcome drop in the wholesale price of natural gas — a market trend we hope will continue.
In a separate filing, PSE has asked the UTC to approve a general rate change in spring 2010 to recover investments made in energy infrastructure as well as costs related to power-supply expenses in 2008. The filing requests an increase of an overall 2.5 percent in natural gas rates and 7.7 percent in electric rates for all customer groups.
When PSE seeks any change in our rates, we have an obligation to let you know why. You have a right to know, in simple, clear terms, the underlying reasons for any PSE rate change — up or down.
We’ve employed a variety of tools in the past for communicating with customers about rates and other important energy matters. Bill inserts, media outreach, postings on PSE.com, and PSE participation in community meetings are a few of the ways we try to explain what we do and why we do it. We recognize everyone likes rate decreases and no one likes rate increases. But we do want to keep you informed and help manage your overall utility bill and energy use.
This year, we deployed additional tools to enhance communications with our customers with the official PSE blog hosted by Andy Wappler and on Twitter at PSETalk. I am excited about the AskAndy blog’s ability to reach you and other customers quickly and directly with important energy-related information. Even more compelling, though, is the ability we gain with the blog and Twitter to more easily hear your ideas and suggestions and, yes, your complaints. Listening to you, our customers, can only help us at PSE do our jobs better.
You’ll find our Internet blog at AskAndy.PSE.com and you can follow us on Twitter at Twitter.com/PSETalk. I welcome you to join in the conversation. You can always contact us by telephone at 1-888-225-5773 and find lots of information on Puget Sound Energy at PSE.com.
Sincerely,
Stephen P. Reynolds
President and CEO, Puget Sound Energy