Some new regulations and legislation are in the works in Alberta for making electricity more affordable.
Nathan Neudorf, the province’s minister for Affordability and Utilities, says one of the things they intend on doing is a “renaming” of the Regulated Rate Option.
“The word regulated gives people the false impression that the government is somehow protecting that rate and it’s not. We saw last year that the RRO became very volatile hitting the highest price in Albertas history at 31.8 cents/kWh. A lot of people had no idea that they were on that rate, they didn’t know why their bills just jumped and became so expensive.”
Neudorf says they intend to rename the default electricity rate to the Rate of Last Resort and also bring in rules that would make electricity rates more stable.
“How our market is set-up is that we have to buy the lowest cost electricity first with no consideration for reliability. That makes our market really vulnerable to quite literally changes in the weather which is what we’ve seen. We’re working on restructuring that market so that reliability has a very high priority in the order of purchasing.”
According to Neudorf, default electricity rates will be stabilized by being set for each provider every two years to reduce volatility in the electricity market.
The government intends on introducing a bill in the legislature later this spring for getting these new regulations in place.
You can listen to our full interview with Neudorf below.
– Kyle Moore, Trending 55 Newsroom
