Just as the shock started to wear off from skyrocketing gas pump and grocery store prices, Kingfisher electric customers opened their August utility bills.

“Dude! I’m gonna need a third job for this! What is going on!” one Kingfisher resident wrote on Facebook above a photo of her $579.31 utility bill, including $473.09 in electric charges.

Other city residents commented on the post that they had seen similar jumps in their August bills, including one reported at $776.45.

What’s going on is a spike in the monthly Power Cost Adjustment, a surcharge passed from electric generation facilities, to the Oklahoma Municipal Authority, to the Kingfisher Public Works Authority and then to residential and commercial electrical customers, City Manager Dave Slezickey said.

The cost adjustment is a per-killowatt-hour fee that fluctuates from month-tomonth to reflect the current cost of fuel required to produce electricity.

While OMPA derives its electricity from a variety of sources – including wind, hydro-electric and coal – “a majority of power generated is from natural gas,” Slezickey said.

And current volatility of natural gas prices is the driver behind the skyrocketing cost adjustment added to customer bills, he said.

Typically, natural gas prices are higher in the winter time, when demand for heating fuel rises, and prices tend to drop in the summer months.

But due to a variety of factors, prices this year kept rising into the summer.

In fact, natural gas prices were nearly four times as high in May as they were the previous year, according to an OMPA fact sheet.

“Natural gas producers are still recovering from winter storm Uri, both financially and operationally,” Slezickey said, referring to the prolonged deep freeze that hit Oklahoma and Texas in February 2021.

“Also, with the Ukraine/ Russian conflict, a larger portion of gas produced here in the U.S. is being shipped to Europe and Asia in the form of liquified natural gas,” he said.

Reduced supply coupled with increased demand over the summer have resulted in astronomical natural gas prices nationwide.

Those rising prices have significantly increased electric production costs “and customers are feeling the brunt of the burden, along with rising costs of everything else,” Slezickey said.

“We’re seeing that most customers have usage at the same level as last year, but the PCA is making their bill larger.”

Kingfisher’s electric rates are 10.44 cents per kwh for commercial buildings and 8.9 cents for residential usage, but the current PCA adds almost 3 cents more per kwh.

So for a commercial customer who used 5,327 kwh of electricity, the cost adjustment added another $155.40 to a bill that otherwise would have been $475.10 (plus the $20.50 monthly service charge).

For residential customers, the cost adjustment increased their bills by nearly a third, Slezickey said.

Currently, the city’s computer-generated bills and online bill pay platform do not separate out the power charge adjustment from the normal usage charge, but Slezickey said the PCA will be posted under the notes section of each bill to provide more clarity in the future.

This summer’s prolonged heatwave and record- setting July and August temperatures made the situation even worse, Slezickey said. Utilizing the city’s own power plant to reduce costs also isn’t a viable alternative. “We can produce 8 megawatts of electricity per day, which is not sufficient to meet our average summer load of 10 megawatts per day,” Slezickey said. “And even if we had permission to generate and serve our city, our natural gas costs would be significantly higher because of our lack of purchasing power.”

While the city has no discretion on the amount of the power adjustment it must charge each month, Slezickey said city staff will work with residents to set up a payment plan or help connect customers with local resources who can assist with payment.

“We understand that high bills impact everyone in our community and some people more than others,” Slezickey said. “We want to help however we can, but requests for extensions or payment plans do need to be made prior to the Sept. 15 due date.”