TULSA - Public Service Company of Oklahoma filed an application Friday with the Oklahoma Corporation Commission to boost its rate base by $2.4 billion for investments in capital assets that were made in the last 22 months.
If the request is approved as filed, the “average” PSO residential customer using 1,100 kilowatt-hours per month would experience a utility bill increase of approximately $25 per month by July, according to PSO Region Communications Manager Matt Rahn.
The capital investments include electric grid upgrades, advanced technologies, and “smart” tools that reduce outages, speed restoration, and provide accurate billing and real-time alerts.
Company officials claim their filing supports initiatives that already are improving service to customers.
-PSO spent $5.45 million in 2023 on a transmission telecommunication modernization project in the Lawton area.
The TTMP work “coordinated and prioritized with other transmission projects and focused on areas that did not have transmission projects,” said Jeffrey Ellis, transmission planning manager for American Electric Power Service Co., a subsidiary of American Electric Power, as is PSO.
“The priority of the program was to build out a next generation fiber optic transport network,” Ellis said. “To meet the ever-expanding bandwidth demands across the PSO regional footprint, the TTMP program built 50 miles of AEP-owned fiber.”
-Additional investments in pole replacements, undergrounding lines, and advanced metering improve safety and communication with customers on outage restoration efforts.
-PSO’s vegetation management program has cut outages blamed on trees in rightsof-way by 91%, reducing interruptions from 115,888 in 2008 to 10,025 at the end of 2024, said Tyler H. Devereux, managing director of distribution operations for PSO.
The company has experienced a cost-per-mile increase of approximately 20% for costs affiliated with vegetation management activities in 2020-25, said Devereux, who earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Tulsa University in 2012. Those increases were driven by “several key factors, including external and internal labor, material and fuel,” he said. The “specialized workforce” needed for vegetation management is comprised of “highly skilled manual workers” who are in “increasingly high demand,” he said.
-Utility executives said the company’s Grid Enhancement and Resiliency program has saved more than 144 million customer minutes of service interruption since 2020 through automation and smart reclosers.
-On the generation side, the acquisition of the Green Country Power Plant at Jenks adds 795 megawatts of natural gas capacity, and investments in other generation facilities strengthen PSO’s reliability, company officials said.
-As part of its rate review request, PSO proposes special terms and conditions for new large customers to ensure they pay full costs to connect to the grid as Oklahoma attracts major investment and economic growth. The new terms are intended to prevent costs from being shifted to existing customers and to maintain grid reliability, while enabling PSO to serve new large loads - such as data centers, cryptomining, and artificial intelligence operations - responsibly and sustainably, the company said.
“This filing is the beginning of a rigorous review process with regulators and other stakeholders,” said Matthew Horeled, vice president of Regulatory and Finance for PSO. “Throughout this process, PSO will work transparently to ensure every aspect of the request is thoroughly examined. “
PSO provides programs such as its average monthly payment plan, PowerPay, energy efficiency resources, and bill assistance to help manage costs and keep energy affordable, Horeled said.
PSO price increases continue to add up
Maiy Elizabeth Purvis, a programs manager with the Corporation Commission’s Public Utility Division, testified last year that the Public Utility Division is concerned that the cumulative effect of recent and projected rate increases imposes “an increasingly significant financial burden on PSO customers.”
State regulators approved, by a 2-1 vote June 4, PSO’s application to start billing its customers almost immediately after acquiring the 23-yearold, 795-megawatt natural-gas plant “Green Country” power plant in Jenks.
To finance the acquisition, “The average residential customer using 1,100 kilowatt-hours per month will see an increase of $7.19 on their total bill,” said Rahn. “In 2026 that average impact will drop to $6.47.”
PSO estimates the Jenks power plant still has a 30year life span. Corporation Commissioner Todd Hiett expressed concern about PSO’s projected $138 million in Green Country operation and maintenance expenses over the next three decades.
PSO also filed a request on Sept. 12, 2025, for permission to bill its customers for construction work in progress (CWIP) on eight projects that would produce 1,299 megawatts of electricity.
Those projects include three purchased power agreements (PPAs) supplied from wind farms, three battery energy storage systems (BESS), a capacity purchase agreement (CPA) with an existing natural gas-fired power plant, and a self-build natural gas combustion turbine purchased power and sale agreement (PSA).
Development of the eight energy sources would cost an estimated $1,255 billion - which would be paid for entirely by the utility’s customers. In contrast, a private company must finance capital improvements with borrowed money or its own reserves and recoup that investment from its subsequent profits.
The new energy sources would be phased in from 2026 through 2029, starting with three wind purchase power agreements and one capacity purchase agreement in 2026-27. Three battery storage systems would enter service in 2028, and the Northeastern Units 5 and 6 gas facility would be completed in 2029.
The total estimated annual retail rate impact of PSO’s proposal after all of the generation resources entered commercial operation is $157.1 million, Horeled stated in pre-filed testimony.
In 2029, after all of the eight proposed new PSO facilities are operational, the projected impact on a typical residential customer who uses 1,100 kilowatt-hours of electricity each month would be $10.34, according to Rebecca Schwarz.
She is director of regulatory pricing and analysis for American Electric Power Service Corp.
Commercial customers would experience a rate increase of 0.76% in 2026, and an estimated total bill increase in 2029 of 5.51%. For the industrial class, PSO estimated an increase of 1.06% in 2026 and a total bill increase in 2029 of 6.05%.
Meanwhile, PSO incurred $675.2 million in fuel and purchased power costs during the two-week Winter Storm Uri in February 2021. In May 2022 the Oklahoma Supreme Court authorized the Oklahoma Development Finance Authority to “securitize” those expenses by selling bonds, which won’t be paid off for another 17 years.
For the “average” PSO residential customer, the monthly cost of the storm recovery bonds was estimated at approximately $4.70, depending on a customer’s usage.
Tulsa-based PSO, a unit of American Electric Power, is an electric utility company serving more than 580,000 customer accounts in 232 cities and towns in eastern and southwestern Oklahoma. Those include Lawton, Altus, Duncan, Chickasha, Cache, Elgin, Fletcher, Porter Hill, Sterling, Hobart, Apache, Rush Springs, Carnegie, Cement and Cyril.
Mike W. Ray is afifth-generation, award winning journalist who has more than 55years’ experience covering municipal, county, state, and federal government in Oklahoma and Texas.
He can be reached at mike, ray@swoknews.com.