Rates & Regulations

Our rates are regulated by the NWT Public Utilities Board (Board) to ensure our rates are fair and reasonable. The rates (tariffs) we charge are all approved by the Board in an open, public process. Our costs are fully transparent and any changes to our rates are subject to a formal process which includes scrutiny by customers, municipalities, and other users.

A Rate Rider is a temporary credit or charge that may appear on utility bills in some communities. The Board approves rate riders to enable firms to recover actual operational costs that are not included in the approved rates. 

Under the rate base/rate of return method of regulation, used by the Board, a GRA is usually handled in two phases. 

The first phase, known as the “Revenue Requirement”, examines the utility company’s revenues and expenses. The purpose of Phase I of a GRA is to determine the amount of revenue that the utility company needs to earn in a year to cover its costs in providing service to its customers and to earn a fair return on its investment. 

Once the Board issues a decision on the Phase I revenue requirement, the utility company may file a Phase II Application, in which it proposes how it is going to collect its annual revenue requirement from each of its various types of customer groups (e.g. residential, commercial, streetlights etc.). The main purpose of a Phase II filing is to determine the specific rates that each type of customer group will be charged and to demonstrate that these rates will enable the utility company to collect its annual revenue requirement.