Gas goes up, electricity goes down

By Medicine Hat News on February 2, 2018.

Medicine Hat News

Heating your home and business will cost more in February than it did in January, according to utility rates released by the City of Medicine Hat on Thursday.

The price of gas will sit at $2.24 per gigajoule this month, up from $1.74 in January. Electricity will cost 4.88 cents, per kilowatt hour. That’s down from 4.93 last month.

Medicine Hat rates are set at the provincial average of default rates.

The highest power price in the province is 5.18 cents, set by Enmax Energy Corporation, while the lowest is Epcor Energy GP (outside Edmonton) at 4.72. That’s of the four approved electricity rates.

On the gas side, the comparable rates for gas were $2.33 by AltaGas and $2.14 by Direct Energy

Until the start of this year, Medicine Hat utility officials used prices from 10 locations to determine the average power prices and similarly, four major gas suppliers.

The change is a condition of Medicine Hat’s municipally owned utility falling under the provincial government’s price cap of 6.8 cents for power.