Natural Gas Rate Adjustments
Natural Gas Rate Adjustments
Friday – October 1, 2021 – 2:00pm
At the September meeting of the Huntsville Utilities Natural Gas & Waterworks Board, board members approved an increase to the usage rate for all natural gas rate classes – residential and commercial. These adjustments will go into effect November 1, 2021. Usage fees for residential customers will increase on November 1 from $8.96 per thousand cubic feet (mcf) to $10.22 per mcf. Commercial customers, depending upon their rate class, will see an increase of about $1.00 per mcf in their usage fee. The natural gas availability fee, across all customer classes, will remain unchanged at this time. The adjusted rates will be published on our website in late October, per company policy.
Prices for natural gas have increased exponentially over the past few months. Huntsville Utilities works hard to forecast purchasing prices and implement best practices to achieve the lowest purchasing prices possible, but not all the impacts of the recent purchasing price increases could be avoided. To mitigate these impacts and prevent any possible impacts a cold winter could have on prices, the Natural Gas and Waterworks Board, under advisement from Huntsville Utilities natural gas purchasing experts, determined that a usage rate increase was necessary. We anticipate holding the rates at this level for the remainder of the fiscal year.
Huntsville Utilities is a publicly-owned, not-for-profit utility company providing electric service to over 200,000 customers, water service to over 103,000 customers, and natural gas service to over 59,000 customers in Huntsville and Madison County, Alabama.