Las Cruces Electric Bills Skyrocket, Is El Paso Next?

It's not just Las Cruces that's about to take a hit, El Paso Electric wants to impose a huge rate hike on all of Dona Ana County ...

In addition to Cruces, Dona Ana County is also home to Santa Teresa, Sunland Park, Anthony, Mesilla, Hatch, about half of Chaparral, (the Dona Ana/Otero county lines run through Chap), and a few others.

The rise in rates is pretty significant, makes me wonder if El Paso is next.

El Paso Electric says the money is needed to cover $400 million dollars they spent on the county's infrastructure.

Why Is EP Electric Raising Rates?

"In the New Mexico case, the bulk of that what we're talking about is local investment," said Jim Schichtl, VP of Strategic Regulation for El Paso Electric. "That is investment into the poles and wires and substations and transformers that serve customers on the distribution side. There's also been investment primarily in transmission, in this case, and that's about it." - KVIA

They're talking about every electric bill in Dona County going up about $42 every month.

What About El Paso?

Our rates already jumped but not as much. Back in May, they went up about $13 a month and some solar charges went up.

Now, with this giant leap in New Mexico rates and new, energy - sucking data centers going up in and near El Paso, it wouldn't surprise me if our rates spike again. The City of El Paso says they will protect us from data center related rate hikes. We've heard them say "no new taxes" and "no tax hikes" many, many times before though.

I totally feel a disturbance in The Force ... What do you think will happen?