After promising to fight Rocky Mountain Power's latest rate-hike proposal with a "significant reduction or elimination,” Wyoming's Office of Consumer Advocate is going further.
In a Tuesday filing, the OCA argues Rocky Mountain Power should not only drop the 8.8% rate increase it requested in May but should actually charge 2.9% less for power than it does now.
This year's proposed hike is the third in three years. In 2023, Rocky Mountain Power asked for 21.6% more, which the OCA and the Wyoming Industrial Energy Consumers argued was too high.
The Public Service Commission approved $53.9 million, or 8.3%, less than half of the $140.2 million the utility wanted.
In 2024, the utility came back asking for 14.7%. The OCA and the industrial group negotiated a settlement that brought it down to 10.2%, which commissioners reluctantly approved in April 2025.
The intervenors trimmed both requests, but customers still paid more each time. This year is the first time they're asking regulators for a cut.
‘Balls and Strikes’
OCA deputy administrator Justin Ballard told Cowboy State Daily the agency doesn’t view this as an escalation from past years. It is instead a numbers-based determination.
“From the OCA’s perspective, we like to say we call balls and strikes,” Ballard said. “We’re not out to stick it to the company. It’s just what our analysis bore out.”
The OCA reviewed Rocky Mountain Power's request line by line using its in-house analysts and outside utility consultants. It concluded the utility was overstating what it needs to collect from customers.
Most of the gap comes from what the utility expects to spend on electricity next year. The OCA says the utility built its 2027 forecast on natural gas and wholesale power prices from December, which have since fallen.
It also says RMP tacked on a pricing adjustment that counts some costs twice, and that it undercounted the savings from a regional energy market it joined in May.
To form its recommendation, the OCA takes a comprehensive look at the company's investments and proposals, Ballard said.
“We look at that through the lens of whether we believe it’s just, reasonable and a prudent expense or investment,” Ballard said. “They’re entitled to reasonable, prudent, just expenses. But we also look at it to make sure that they don’t get a dollar more than they are entitled to.”
Rising Costs for Everyone
In its initial filing, Rocky Mountain Power says it needs the additional money to keep up with the cost of running its system. The utility points to rising investment in equipment, higher operating costs and inflation across its six-state territory, along with the growing price of wildfire insurance.
Rocky Mountain Power spokesperson Jona Whitesides told Cowboy State Daily the company’s investments are ultimately on behalf of the customers.
“Part of the responsibility we have is to maintain the grid and to make improvements and allow it to grow as needed,” Whitesides said. “In the last couple rate cases, we haven’t gotten a full recovery on the expenditures we make and, in most cases, we spend all the money up front.”
The company’s request also includes a credit for customers, which Rocky Mountain Power says would share the proceeds from selling its Washington service area.
“The credit back to the customer on this overall rate is going to be 2.8%, if the commission were to grant recovery on that 8.8%,” Whitesides said.
The Data Center Question
The OCA also looked into whether data centers are behind the increase, as Rocky Mountain Power has previously denied. Ballard said the office found no indication that they are.
“Rocky Mountain Power, to the best of my knowledge, does not serve any data centers in Wyoming,” Ballard said.
Elsewhere in the country, data centers have pushed up power costs for everyone on the grid. Their enormous demand forces utilities and grid operators to buy more generation and build more transmission ahead of time, and those costs are sometimes shared across all customers.
Gov. Mark Gordon signed an executive order June 3 directing state agencies to ensure that data center developers bear added costs of the power they require without passing off costs to residential and small-business customers. The order sets policy for agencies and doesn't change existing law or require data centers to generate their own electricity.
In the Rocky Mountain Power case, Ballard noted that most of Wyoming’s data center development is in Cheyenne, which is serviced by Cheyenne Light, Fuel and Power, a subsidiary of Black Hills Corp.
‘Next Big Milestone’
Rocky Mountain Power has until Oct. 28 to respond to the OCA's recommendation with its own rebuttal. If the parties don't reach a settlement before then, the Wyoming Public Service Commission will hear the contested case in December.
Whitesides told Cowboy State Daily that, based on the past rate cases, this will likely go to a hearing. But, until the company’s attorneys have a chance to look at OCA’s filing thoroughly, he can’t say for sure.
"Right now, it’s a flip of a coin based upon what is in what they filed yesterday,” Whitesides told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday.
Ballard said the contested hearing will work much like a trial.
The OCA and the other intervenors, the Wyoming Industrial Energy Consumers and a consortium of irrigators and agricultural customerswill present their testimony, as will Rocky Mountain Power's witnesses, and each side can cross-examine the other’s.
“That will be the next big milestone of this case,” Ballard said.
Emma Jane Jackson can be reached at emma@cowboystatedaily.com.
