(The Center Square) – Seattle City Light customers will see their electric bills go up by more than 80% over the next six years based on projections the utility has calculated in its strategic plan from 2027 to 2032.
The overall plan was passed by the Seattle City Council on last month, and two weeks later the council approved the first of two 9.5% rate increases, one for 2027 and one for 2028.
But buried in the dozens of pages that make up the strategic documents are also plans for even more rate shock after 2029.
They show an even larger 9.8% rate scheduled for 2029, jumping to 11.2% in 2030. Then in 2031, there is another 11.2% increase projected, followed by an 11.6% rate increase in 2032.
This is on top of a 5.4% rate increase that was already put in place in January 2026.
The projected rate scale shows that an average apartment resident who has a $76 monthly bill will see a rate increase of 81% by 2032.
Homeowners paying an average of $124 a month for their electricity will see a rate increase of 85.5% by 2032, documents show.
The new rates past 2029 would need to be approved by the City Council and could vary by several percentage points depending on inflation and other factors.
But even under the best of circumstances, the utility is estimating the absolute minimum rate increase per year starting in 2029 would be at least 7%.
The rate increases come from a utility that is not investor-owned but owned by the city of Seattle and operates on a non-profit basis.
City Light Chief Financial Officer Kirsty Grainger said the utility is facing rising costs, backlogged capital needs and growing demand for electricity.
“The increase reflects the reality of Seattle’s energy needs,” she said in an interview with The Center Square.
Traditionally, City Light customers have seen increases of between 4% and 5% – less than the 8.6% average hikes customers of investor-owned Puget Sound Energy have seen since 2023. PSE serves many of the surrounding areas outside of Seattle.
Grainger said the electrification of buildings and vehicles has sent power use soaring as all of the low-hanging conservation efforts have been tapped.
Extreme cold and heat, and wider adoption of air conditioning, have simultaneously sent the city’s peak demand periods to new heights, she said.
That trend is projected to continue. By 2045, City Light estimates it will need more than 3,500 new megawatts – more than double the amount Seattle consumes currently.
Seattle’s hydro dams won’t keep up, she said, nor will its practice of filling energy needs with purchases from the Bonneville Power Administration dams on the Columbia River.
If no new power is added, Grainger said the city will have more than 20 days a year when demand exceeds supply.
She said the industry standard is to have no more than one such day every decade.
Seattle’s tough environmental rules on where power is generated, even tougher than state law, also play a role in the costs.
Because City Light is barred from buying fossil fuels and bringing on new power, she said, it means building or contracting for new wind, solar, nuclear, or geothermal energy – all of which will cost more than what City Light pays for power from the existing dams north of Seattle.
Meanwhile, power generation has gotten more volatile as drought has left less water behind the city’s dams.
Compounding the stress, Grainger said, is rapid inflation in the cost of essential supplies and increasingly urgent capital needs.
Grainger said the city is also in the early stages of a $3 billion program to replace aging underground cables and upgrade the grid. She said some cables are 40 to 50 years old and, in certain areas of the city with the oldest cables, have become prone to power outages.
The utility will spend $4 billion on the Skagit River hydroelectric project. It also expects to add one or two new substations, each likely to cost more than $200 million.
Under a historic $4 billion, 50-year relicensing agreement signed in May 2026, Seattle City Light committed to an environmental and financial package with the Upper Skagit, Swinomish, and Sauk-Suiattle tribes.
This includes $350 million in direct financial compensation and employment programs for the tribes, alongside nearly $1 billion for fish passages and hundreds of millions for watershed and habitat restoration.
Some members of the Seattle City Council bemoaned the added rate burden on customers back at a city Council meeting on July 7.
“I can’t underscore enough the impact of what we’re being asked to ultimately approve here on people’s everyday lives,” Councilmember Rob Saka said.
Concurrently, with the rates, the City Council voted to expand a City Light utility discount program. Single residents can make more than $65,000 a year and still be eligible for rate discounts under the. program.
But the cost of the program is being borne by other higher-income utility customers who are not getting a discount.