Print edition: 
Westar Energy rates will be going up again, for the fourth time this year.
The company, state regulatory staff and consumer advocates Friday announced a unanimous settlement that will increase rates by $17.1 million a year. In addition, the parties have reached an agreement on how to implement rate consolidation between Westar's northern and southern divisions.
The settlement will need final approval by the Kansas Corporation Commission, which seldom orders changes when all the parties agree on a deal.
A KCC release said the latest increase will add $1 to the cost of an average customer's bill, noting that would vary based on usage and other factors.
David Springe, chief consumer counsel for the Citizens' Utility Ratepayer Board, calculated that a customer who uses 900 kilowatts of power a month, which the state uses as its average, would pay about $1 more a month in the summer and $1.80 more a month in the winter.
Customers with larger homes who use 1,500 kilowatts a month should expect to see an increase of about $2.40 in the summer and $4.70 in winter, Springe calculated.
The rate increase comes in a "mini rate case" that finalizes some unfinished business from a $130 million-a-year rate increase granted to Westar in January.
The new hike compensates the company for its investments in a power plant in Emporia and two wind farms.
In addition, Westar rates were increased by $32 million in March to pay for transmission line upgrades and by $33.7 million in May for environmental upgrades at the company's coal-fired power plants.
The cumulative effects of the hikes increase bills by roughly $11 to $15 a month.
Springe said CURB, the state agency that represents residential and small business customers, is satisfied with the settlement announced Friday.
"They (Westar) proposed $19.7 million and we said $17.1 million, and they agreed to that," Springe said.
Westar spokesman Leonard Allen said the company also is pleased with the settlement.
"It allows us to recover some of our costs for the plants," he said. "It's always good to have a settlement between the parties."
Other interests that intervened in the case and agreed to the settlement include the city of Wichita; Wichita school district; Kroger Corp., the parent company of Dillons markets; and Kansas Industrial Consumers, which represents aerospace companies and other large purchasers of electricity.
Overall, Westar serves 675,000 customers.
The parties also agreed on rate consolidation.
In October, the commission ordered that rates between Westar's northern and southern divisions be equalized.
Since the 1992 merger that formed the company that became Westar, the southern division, the former KGE territory, has generally paid higher rates than Westar North, formerly KPL.
But recent increases in the cost of coal generation pushed northern rates up while rates in the southern division — primarily nuclear-powered — were more stable.
The commission decided to order the change because rates in the two systems had come close together. It overrode complaints by Wichita and KIC that the change was unfair to southern customers, who had paid higher rates for years and were only now starting to see benefits from investing in the Wolf Creek nuclear plant.
The commission's October order planned for a separate proceeding to decide how to consolidate the rates, but that will probably be unnecessary now because of the settlement, Springe said.
