Lansdale Electric staff work to install a new substation at the Ninth Street utility complex in April 2025. (Photo courtesy of Lansdale Electric)
Charge for electric vehicles is among increases up for approval
An electric rate hike in Lansdale is now on the books, and increases to several other fees could be just days away.
Council could vote later this month to approve an updated fee schedule, adding a new fee for using public electric vehicle chargers among other increases.
“We’re going to be moving forward to full council on the update of the electric department’s fee schedule. This schedule, if you’re not familiar, has not been updated since 2015,” said Councilman Andrew Carroll.
“It’s just practical increases in some of our associated costs that we bill residents for: metering, testing, project work that we do for residents, and it was even brought up by a member of the public that he thought our rates were really reasonable,” he said.
Borough staff made the case throughout 2024 for the electric rate hike to cover increased electric capacity and transmission costs hitting customers nationwide, plus a need to repair and replace infrastructure and equipment amid supply chain and inflation problems, and to cover a $4.5 million transfer from electric to the general fund in the 2025 borough budget.
The increase would be the first time the town has raised its electric rate since late 2014 for 2015, and in April staff said the rate hike approved that month would help cover increased costs for materials and electricity itself, plus projects like a new transformer now fully installed at the department’s Ninth Street complex that replaces one from the late 1970s.
In their May meeting, Carroll said, the electric committee that he chairs saw a before-and-after version of the new fee schedule that full council could vote to adopt later this month. The new fee schedule will add a new “purchase power cost adjustment” meant to cover the increased costs of the power the town buys wholesale, and increases for various meter connection, testing, and equipment usage fees to cover most of the department’s operations.
Lansdale Electric staff work to install a new substation at the Ninth Street utility complex in April 2025. (Photo courtesy of Lansdale Electric)“This is some more housekeeping in keeping with what we’ve been doing this year: getting our language up to date, getting our fees up to date. That’ll be coming forward in two weeks,” Carroll said.
The new fee schedule also adds a fee for use of borough-owned electric vehicle chargers, which had previously been subsidized at no cost to EV users since their installation in 2019 at several public parking lots.
“We’re doing a very modest rate for that, but we do want to make sure we’re recouping our costs,” Carroll said.
That committee also discussed recent reports that have not been formally announced, but indicate that major rate hikes are being planned by both PECO and PP&L starting in June, which could hike electric costs for customers of those utilities by as much as 20 percent.
An electric vehicle decorated with “Lansdale Electric” decals is parked in front of the borough’s solar array at the Ninth Street utility complex, which generates the electricity used to power the vehicle. (Photo courtesy of Lansdale Electric)“We were still beating them at our new level, and they’re going up by 20 percent, so it’s just going to widen the gap of savings we can offer our residents and customers,” Carroll said.
“But the cost of power is going up everywhere. We have to keep remembering that, and keep planning for it, as best we can,” he said.
And some good news for customers: now that a new billing system has been implemented that’s meant to streamline payments and processing, staff are working on ways to return deposits to the residents that have prepaid them, and those deposits could be refunded over time as credits toward future bills.
“The goal is June, so more to come on that, and some very happy renters will be getting a little bit of relief in June, which is one of the more expensive months for electric,” he said.
Lansdale’s borough council next meets at 7 p.m. on May 21 and the electric committee next meets at 7:30 p.m. on June 4, both at the borough municipal bluding,1 Vine Street. For more information visit www.Lansdale.org.
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