Wisconsin Electric filed a request with the Public Service Commission earlier this year to increase its rates 6.9% in 2025 and another 4.78% in 2026, but it was unclear which customers would face the biggest increase.
While the PSC will ultimately determine how rates are set for residential, small business and large industrial customers, the company made its initial proposals in recent filings. Other stakeholder groups, including the Citizens Utility Board of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Industrial Energy Group, will likely also make suggestions before a final decision is made.
The company, part of We Energies and a subsidiary of WEC Energy Group, is proposing increases ranging from 4.17% to 9.23% for 2025 depending on customer class, according to filings with the PSC. The proposed rates are based on a cost of service study, which is a mathematical model that attempts to identify which customer types caused the utility to incur which costs.
A We Energies spokesman noted the company’s rate requests prioritize reducing customer outages, building infrastructure needed to support economic growth and meeting new environmental rules. In recent years the company has announced billions of dollars worth of investments in solar, wind, battery storage and natural gas power generation and is also planning to retire a number of coal power plants or transition them to natural gas generation.
Residential and farm customers face the largest potential increase at 9.23% in the We Energies proposal, although residential time-of-use customers would see a slightly smaller increase at 9.06%. In 2026, those groups would face additional increases of 8.52% for standard residential and farm customers and 8% for residential time-of-use customers.
These customers would account for around 45.8% of Wisconsin Electric’s revenue in the proposed rates, up from 44.8% under the current design.
Small commercial customers, those with less than 10,000 kilowatt hours of energy consumption per month, would see an increase of 6.3% in 2025 and another 2.47% in 2026. Small commercial customers on a time-of-use rate would see a smaller increase of 4.25% in 2025 and then a 2.73% increase in 2026.
This group of customers would account for around 8.7% of revenue in 2025, unchanged from the current design.
Medium commercial customers, generally those with more than 10,000 and less than 30,000 kWh in monthly consumption, would face a 4.17% increase in 2025 and a 1.93% increase for 2026.
We Energies’ proposal calls for medium commercial customers to account for about 5.8% of revenue, down from 6%.
In the large secondary customer category, which includes customers with more than 30,000 kWh of monthly consumption, rates would go up 4.83% in 2025 and another 2.1% in 2026.
This group of customers would account for 19.5% of revenue, down from 19.9% in the current design.
The primary category, which includes commercial and industrial customers with demand of more than 300 kW, would see an increase of 5.52% in 2025 and another 1.72%.
The primary category would account for 18.1% of revenue under the proposal, down from 18.3% under the current rate design.
