US News

SAY WATT? CON ED BILLS MAY SOAR A RE’VOLT’ING 30%

Get ready for another shock in your Con Ed bill – city residents could pay as much as 30 percent more for juice this summer.

Experts say higher fuel costs will bring an extra chill during this year’s air-conditioning season.

Wholesale prices for electricity to be delivered to the city in July and August are now up a whopping 89 percent over last summer, according to federal regulators, although state regulators say the increase is no more than 66 percent.

Either way, utility experts predict the increases could translate into a potential 30 percent rate hike passed on to residential buyers.

And that’s before Con Ed’s latest demand for three straight years of 4.9 percent electricity-price increases, which it hopes will kick in next April.

Con Ed already charges the highest prices of any major US electric utility.

If experts’ 30 percent price-hike prediction is right, a Con Ed customer who paid $131 for 500 kilowatt hours of power last July will pay around $170 this summer.

Con Ed says 30 percent seems too high and instead foresees a smaller summer increase of around 13 percent over last year.

“That’s our estimate. That’s on the customer bill, and it includes what our expectations are for the wholesale cost of electricity,” said Joe Oates, Con Ed’s VP for energy management.

If that’s accurate, then the customer would pay $148.

Both predictions take into account last month’s state-approved 4.7 percent rate hike.

One cause of the coming summer electric-bill spike is higher natural-gas prices, which have nearly doubled since last year.

Also, last summer was relatively cool, and that depressed wholesale power prices a bit as people used less air conditioning, Oates said.

bill.sanderson@nypost.com