Sen. Deery Shares Update

At the start of the legislative session, I announced that one of my top priorities would be to fight rising utility rates. Among the bills I had in mind was one I co-sponsored, House Enrolled Act 1002. With this law, Indiana will begin to hold electric utilities accountable for affordability and reliability.

HEA 1002 will accomplish this through several reforms. The most helpful to ratepayers will be to require utilities to be regulated under what is called “performance-based ratemaking.”

Under this new model, if a utility’s average residential bill increases significantly faster than national electricity prices, the utility’s financial return on its investments will be cut by the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission (IURC). Service providers would also need to ensure their utility is reliable, and if the total duration of a utility’s service outages significantly increases, their return will also be cut.

Switching to a performance-based model is the biggest change to Indiana’s ratemaking process in over 100 years. Our state has historically operated under a cost-of-service model, where companies could charge customers to recoup their costs. Going forward, the amount utilities can collect will be based on the quality of service they provide to customers.

The state’s major consumer advocate groups endorsed this bill and it passed the Senate unanimously because preventing utilities from passing along costs to ratepayers without answering for affordability and reliability is a huge win for Hoosiers.

I also authored legislation this session to create transparency around the impact of data centers on our rates and to give Hoosiers more liberty to generate their own power through plug-in solar devices that they can plug into their wall to offset the costs of a device like a dryer or a refrigerator. While these last two bills did not move this, year I will continue to fight for more affordability energy prices for all Hoosiers in every way I can. In the meantime, I hope you will celebrate the passing of HEA 1002 with me.