National Grid has filed a summer rate adjustment request with the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission that, if approved, would increase residential electricity rates by approximately 8 percent beginning June 1, compounding what is already the highest average residential electricity cost in the continental United States.

Rhode Island households currently pay an average of 27.4 cents per kilowatt-hour, compared to a national average of 16.2 cents — a gap that business groups and consumer advocates have long identified as one of the state's most significant competitive disadvantages. The proposed summer adjustment, driven primarily by higher wholesale natural gas prices and increased transmission costs, would push the average monthly bill for a typical household from approximately $178 to $192.

The Rhode Island Energy Consumers Alliance, a coalition of business and residential ratepayers, filed a formal protest with the PUC, arguing that National Grid has failed to adequately pursue cost-saving alternatives and that Rhode Island's regulatory framework has allowed the utility to pass through costs that should be absorbed through greater operational efficiency. "Rhode Island ratepayers have been subsidizing bad decisions for years," said alliance director Sandra Petrarca. "We need a PUC that pushes back on these rate requests rather than rubber-stamping them."

Conservative lawmakers have seized on the rate increase as evidence that the state's aggressive renewable energy mandates — which require utilities to source an increasing percentage of power from offshore wind and solar — are driving up costs without delivering promised savings. "We were told that wind energy would lower our bills," said state Sen. Jessica de la Cruz, R-North Smithfield. "Instead, every year we pay more. The green energy agenda is failing Rhode Island families."

Governor McKee's office said the administration is "monitoring the situation closely" and urged the PUC to scrutinize the rate request carefully, but stopped short of opposing the increase outright.