Wisconsin and Oklahoma Trimmed Rate Increases on November 5 and Left Commercial Rate Design to Orders Still Being Written

Two state commissions approved utility rate increases on November 5. The Public Service Commission of Wisconsin set We Energies base electric rates at 3.9 percent for 2027 and 3.5 percent for 2028, below the 4.6 percent and 4.5 percent the utility requested. The Oklahoma Corporation Commission voted 2-1 to raise Public Service Company of Oklahoma residential rates 3.55 percent and commercial rates roughly 3 percent.

Each figure describes a revenue requirement spread across an entire customer base. The number that governs a commercial building’s bill sits one layer down, in class allocation and in which rate component inside the class absorbs the increase.

The Wisconsin class projections. We Energies published class-level projections in its own filing. Small commercial and industrial customers were projected at 6.10 percent in 2027 and 5.20 percent in 2028. Large commercial and industrial customers were projected at 5.95 percent and 2.56 percent. Those are the utility’s figures, filed against a larger request than the commission granted, which means the class shares move with the reduction.

The written order that finalizes those allocations is due in coming weeks. Until it lands, the commercial numbers in circulation are projections attached to a proposal the commission did not adopt in full.

What a class percentage does not say. A class-average increase of a given size is consistent with a flat demand charge paired with a steep energy increase, or with the reverse. A building running a battery against peak kilowatts experiences those two outcomes very differently. The class allocation sets the total; the rate design decides which meter reading pays for it.

What Wisconsin did settle. The commission cut We Energies’ authorized return on equity from 9.8 percent to 9.5 percent. It set Wisconsin Public Service increases at 0.3 percent for 2027 and 2.9 percent for 2028. The deliberation ran roughly ten hours.

Oklahoma redistributed while it cut. The Oklahoma commission approved PSO’s case by a 2-1 vote, with Commissioners Todd Hiett and Brian Bingman in favour and Chair Kim David opposed. The order rejected the rate designs contained in the settlement, a change that lifted residential impacts and eased industrial ones relative to that agreement. The Attorney General’s office put annual customer savings against the settlement at nearly $23 million. Industrial customers receive a refund on interim collections.

The commission issued the decision as an Interim Order in Case PUD2025-000075 because large-load power supply questions remain open. It approved a rate class for customers placing more than 75 megawatts on the system, and routed to further proceedings the question of how large-load customers supplying their own generation contribute to PSO’s generation costs. That proceeding will set the standby and contribution treatment for customer-owned generation in an SPP state where the question has been unresolved since the data-center tariff dispute began.

The component that decides a battery. PSO’s filed commercial and small industrial schedule carries a peak demand charge of $12.31 per peak billing kW. That single number does more work in a storage economic case than the 3 percent headline does.

Screening work from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Clean Energy Group, widely cited in commercial storage underwriting, puts roughly $15 per kW as the level at which demand-charge storage begins to pencil. At $12.31, PSO sits below it. A 3 percent increase moves that figure by a few cents. The threshold does not move at all.

Why the gap matters. Rate cases are reported, and litigated in public, through a single percentage. That percentage is a revenue requirement. A battery responds to none of it directly. It responds to the per-kilowatt price of peak demand, to how billing demand is measured, and to which months of the year that charge is reachable. Those terms live in tariff sheets, not in press releases, and they are not settled by the vote that produces the headline.

Oklahoma illustrates the point in one direction: a commission trimmed the ask, created a new large-load class, and deferred the question most consequential for customer-owned generation to a separate docket. Wisconsin illustrates it in the other: a commission approved less than the utility requested and left the class-by-class distribution of what remains to a document still being written.

What follows. Wisconsin’s written order arrives within weeks, carrying the final class allocations for We Energies and Wisconsin Public Service. In Oklahoma, the approved changes appear on December billing cycles, industrial customers receive their refund on interim collections, and the bring-your-own-generation docket proceeds on its own schedule.

Both decisions landed in a week when regulators are being measured on how much they trim from a utility ask. The trimming is now a matter of record in both states. The division of what remains, and the question of whether a battery dispatched against a given tariff earns anything, are not.

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