Photo by Justin Hoffman

It’s a chicken-and-egg scenario: should improved reliability allow Pepco to charge D.C. residential customers more, or would charging those residential customers allow Pepco to become more reliable?

The utility certainly think it’s the latter, and late last week it requested a $52 million rate increase for D.C. customers. The increase, which would add just short of $6 to the monthly bills of every home in the city, follows a $24 million increase it was granted last year, which was less than the $42 million it had originally requested. Pepco officials say that the higher rates would allow it to continue improving reliability.

Pepco took a big hit after last June’s derecho storm, which left thousands of D.C. residents without power for close to a week. (After the storm, almost half of Pepco’s customers said they would switch electricity providers if they could.) In the wake of that storm, Mayor Vince Gray created a task force to explore putting the city’s power lines underground; that project could cost up to $5 billion.

Sandra Mattavous-Frye, the D.C. People’s Counsel, was quick to fire back at Pepco. “Before the ink is dry on Pepco’s September 2012 $24 million increase, and before you factor in the $72 Million dollars the company has taken from consumers in the past five years, and before anyone can validate whether we have seen even the most basic long term reliability improvements promised, the company is back seeking much, much more,” she said.

The D.C. Public Service Commission will have to approve, alter or reject the rate increase request. Pepco has gotten $72 million worth of rate increases since 2006.