As the coun­try pre­pares for a po­ten­tial in­crease in elec­tric­i­ty bills, the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC) yes­ter­day launched a Bill Cal­cu­la­tor on its web­site.

Last week, the RIC said that all cus­tomers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) will have in­creas­es to their elec­tric­i­ty bills next year by vary­ing amounts across the board–for res­i­den­tial (15 to 64 per cent), com­mer­cial (37 to 51 per cent ) and in­dus­tri­al (58 to 72 per cent).

For E-class in­dus­tri­al cus­tomers, where many plants in the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor fall, that range is the max­i­mum set at 119 per cent to 126 per cent.

To make it eas­i­er for cus­tomers to un­der­stand what their new po­ten­tial bill will look like once the rates ap­ply, the cal­cu­la­tor went on­line yes­ter­day. (See ta­ble)

The rate of in­crease will be de­ter­mined by the new tiers which the RIC has for­mu­lat­ed for all cus­tomers as it moves to a month­ly bill. So es­sen­tial­ly, all elec­tric­i­ty bills will be dif­fer­ent for every­one de­pend­ing on their con­sump­tion.

The biggest change which the RIC is try­ing to em­pha­sise is that cus­tomers will have to pay a month­ly bill.

For in­stance, if you paid $100 every two months for your bill, you will have to di­vide it by two to get your new month­ly bill, be­fore the ad­just­ment which would work out to $50.

With the pro­posed new rates, for that $50, you have to add $7.50 as a month­ly cus­tomer charge and Val­ue Added Tax.

Ac­cord­ing to the cal­cu­la­tor, that month­ly in­crease would be 18 per cent for $100 or $9 more. (See ta­ble)

The rate in­crease comes af­ter three years on the draw­ing board, 12 weeks of con­sul­ta­tions and about sev­en months of de­ter­mi­na­tion.

It is the first rate in­crease in elec­tric­i­ty in T&T in 17 years.

The RIC even in­tro­duced a new C rate class for high-den­si­ty cus­tomers for serv­er farms and da­ta or cryp­tocur­ren­cy min­ing.

How­ev­er, elec­tric­i­ty rates are set to in­crease an­nu­al­ly from 2024 to 2027.

With the in­creas­es, T&TEC’s an­nu­al rev­enue will now move from $3.2 bil­lion to $4.8 bil­lion which is a 50 per cent in­crease and will al­low it to man­age its $5 bil­lion debt to the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC).

It is now up to T&TEC to re­view and de­ter­mine by what range they will in­crease rates.

Chair­man Rom­ney Thomas had told Guardian Me­dia that a rate in­crease is nec­es­sary for the util­i­ty “to main­tain a de­pend­able sup­ply to its cus­tomers”.