Alliant to raise rates March 20

    Customers of Alliant Energy will soon be paying more for their electricity. The company recently announced that it will raise rates for its residential customers by 11.7 percent effective March 20. Alliant filed a request with the Iowa Utilities Board (IUB) to phase in the rate increases over a three-year period. At the end of the three-year period, the final residential rate will be 19.4 percent higher than the current rate.

    Ryan Stensland is an Alliant Energy spokesperson out of Cedar Rapids, and he said that Alliant supplies electricity to roughly 10,000 customers in Washington County. He remarked that the rate increase is being prompted by a few expensive projects the company has undertaken in other parts of the state. Alliant just finished installing 121 wind turbines in Franklin County, which is in north central Iowa. That wind farm took approximately one year to build and became operational last December. The price tag on the project was $468 million.  

    Alliant is also spending $200 million to reduce harmful emissions from its power plant in Lansing, which is in northeast Iowa on the Mississippi River. Stensland said Alliant is reducing its emissions of nitrous oxide and other chemicals to ensure a healthy environment and to comply with the Clean Air Act passed by the U.S. Congress in 1970.

    ?We fully support renewable energy and we want to depend less on fossil fuels,? said Stensland. ?However, there is a cost to going green.?

For more, see our March 12 print edition.