When Lori Bernier learned that Vermont’s largest power utility wanted to raise her electricity rates again this year, the 62-year-old Graniteville resident was livid. She fired off a letter to regulators at the Public Utility Commission and urged them to reject Green Mountain Power’s request for a 7.5 percent increase.
Environmentally conscious people such as Bernier tried to do the right thing by switching from dirty fossil-fuel home-energy sources to cleaner electric ones. Now they are paying the price, she said.
“Households that answered the call to electrify are now locked into rising electric costs with no alternative,” she told regulators. “When electricity becomes the primary source of heat and power, rate increases are no longer marginal—they are existential.”
Dozens of ratepayers beseeched regulators not to grant the utility’s request. Rates only go up, never down, some noted, and seniors on fixed incomes are particularly vulnerable. Others argued that regulators should force GMP to work harder to cut its costs, including by restricting profits enjoyed by the Canadian-owned utility’s investors.
Regulators said they were acutely aware of ratepayers’ struggles but needed to balance that against the utility’s financial health, which also is strained by inflation and its effects.
When electricity becomes the primary source of heat and power, rate increases are no longer marginal — they are existential.
Lori Bernier
“The inflationary costs that are hitting all Vermonters — higher health care, fuel, and other expenses — are also affecting companies, including GMP,” they wrote.
Those greater operating costs, combined with the need to harden the grid against fiercer storms driven by climate change, convinced the three-member panel to approve an increase, though a smaller one than the utility wanted. In late August the regulators approved a 5.5 percent rate bump, the latest in a series of hikes that have made GMP’s total power prices the highest in Vermont.
Every power utility in the state is paying higher costs for expenses such as transformers, tree trimming and employees’ dental insurance, and they’ve been passing those costs on to ratepayers as never before.
Since 2010, the 17 utilities in Vermont have asked regulators to let them raise rates a total of 90 times, and more than half of those requests came during the past four years, according to data from the Department of Public Service, the state agency that advocates for ratepayers.
The rationale, put simply, is that the costs to buy power, move it across the grid and deliver it to customers have all gone up in the past several years, explained Kerrick Johnson, the department’s commissioner.
“I’m not sure there has ever been a time, except maybe when the grid was being put together, that we’ve had these three cycles moving in sync, all with rising costs,” Johnson said.
The result has been sharply higher power costs. The average monthly residential electric bill has increased 39 percent since 2019, according to data from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Average monthly bills in Vermont rose from $97.25 in 2019 to $135 in 2026.
Vermonters increasingly heat their homes, drive and even mow their lawns using electricity. So, 10 percent of the increase comes from the simple fact that residents are using more power.
But the bulk of the increase stems from a 29 percent rise in rates over that period, which outstripped the 26 percent increase in consumer prices overall, the study found. Vermonters using the same amount of electricity today as they did in 2019 are paying an annual average of $342 more for that power, or $28.50 per month, the study found.
Some people have experienced steeper hikes. Hyde Park residents are forking over 35 percent more this year as their local utility tries to dig itself out of debt that accumulated during years of mismanagement. One woman told regulators her total costs had gone up so much that she had to “un-retire” and go back to work, Johnson recalled.
“It’s gut wrenching,” he said. It’s also not over. The department predicts that statewide rates will increase another 25 percent by 2030.
The Hyde Park case is something of an outlier. The Lamoille County municipal utility had for years avoided asking for rate increases to cover needed costs and instead borrowed money to make ends meet, explained its interim general manager, Scott Johnstone.
The utility is “not the only one that has built up debt, but this is extraordinary,” he said. To restructure and pay down the $4.5 million it owes, the utility asked for a 20 percent rate increase, plus an additional 15 percent to address higher operating costs, Johnstone explained. Had that 35 percent increase been spread out over many years, the utility’s 1,400 ratepayers could have acclimated to the rising costs, Johnstone said.
But instead, “it all happened overnight, basically,” he said.
Swanton ratepayers are also facing sharply higher rates because of unforeseen circumstances. The utility is asking for a 30 percent increase in rates following the failure of a key portion of its hydroelectric dam at Highgate Falls. An inflatable rubber bladder that increased the height of the dam by 15 feet tore last year. A fix will take years, according to Swanton Village Manager Bill Sheets.
In the meantime, the utility needs to purchase power from elsewhere, a potential hit of up to $2 million per year. This comes on top of the recent $7 million expense to build a new headquarters and unrelenting increases in the cost of materials.
“Every piece of equipment — every transformer, every pole, every crossarm, every insulator — it does not matter,” Sheets said. “Nothing goes down in price, and some go up exorbitantly.”
The Village of Jacksonville Electric Company, which serves fewer than 800 customers at the southern edge of the state, is enduring a spate of particularly acute increases. Its rates have soared 55 percent over three years, a consequence of myriad factors, from higher storm and tree-trimming costs to raises for staff to the need to boost reserves, general manager James Weber explained.
Many customers are retirees on fixed incomes, and some have been “straight-up outraged” by the increases, he said. Others understand.
“The majority of people, when you explain it to them, they’re not happy, but they get it,” Weber said.
The Department of Public Service has encouraged utilities to boost cash on hand, said Shawn Enterline, its chief of finance and economics, who analyzed utilities’ balance sheets and concluded that some were woefully undercapitalized.
“They were so frugal that they had actually made themselves financially weak,” Enterline said.
The department is encouraging larger, financially stronger utilities to spend prudently, he said.
That’s why the department looked askance when Green Mountain Power requested $341 million in upgrades to the grid over four years as part of its “zero outages initiatives.” Reinforcing the system against storm damage and power restoration costs is expensive but should lead to savings over time, said Josh Castonguay, chief innovation officer at GMP.
Nevertheless, the department concluded — and regulators agreed — that GMP’s proposed upgrades were too aggressive. The PUC ultimately approved only $113 million in upgrades. That will cover improvements such as stronger power lines able to withstand falling tree branches and burying lines to protect them from storm damage.
Regulators also tightened the rate of return that the utility’s investors wanted on the upgrades, reducing it from 10 to 9 percent.
Balancing affordability with the need for responsibly sourced, reliable power is a huge challenge and one the state takes very seriously, Johnson said.
“It is incredibly frustrating, though, when there are some costs over which the department has no control,” Johnson said.
It’s also frustrating for ratepayers such as Bernier. After switching to electric heating appliances to benefit the planet, she still has to use her oil-burning furnace during exceptionally cold periods. With heating oil now much more costly because of the war with Iran, Bernier is bracing to pay some painful utility bills this winter.
“As much as we care about the environment,” she said, “you gotta be able to live.” ➆
The original print version of this article was headlined “Rate Shock | Electricity costs are rising in Vermont, and there’s no end in sight”
This article appears in The Tech Issue • 2026.
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