SDG&E; Seeks State Approval for Rate Hikes : Utilities: If OKd, the typical monthly residential gas and electric bill could rise 7%.

San Diego Gas & Electric on Monday asked state regulators for permission to raise its systemwide electric rates by $94 million.

The filing with the state Public Utilities Commission marked the second electric rate increase sought by SDG&E; since 1985.

However, SDG&E; also intends to seek PUC approval for a $30-million electric rate increase that is linked to previously disclosed construction costs at the San Onofre nuclear power plant, SDG&E;’s pricing manager Doug Hansen said Monday.

The utility also has asked the PUC for permission to boost natural gas rates by $7 million. However, because of the way that the PUC treats rate requests, that natural gas increase could be “offset” by two pending natural gas rate decrease requests, Hansen said.

If all of SDG&E;’s pending gas and electric rate requests were granted, SDG&E;’s typical monthly residential gas and electric bill could rise by about 7% to $65.55 on May 1, 1991, Hansen said.

Similarly, if all pending rate requests are granted by the PUC, SDG&E;’s systemwide average electric rate--which includes rates for residential, industrial and commercial customers--would rise to 9.8 cents per kilowatt-hour, up from the present 9 cents. SDG&E;’s per-kilowatt-hour charge has generally decreased since hitting a record 12.7 cents per hour in 1985, Hansen said.

The company asked for the increases based on higher fuel costs, the cost of its energy conservation programs that had been approved by the PUC, and general inflation.

Michael Shames, executive director of Utility Consumers Action Network, a San Diego-based consumer group, on Monday described SDG&E;’s rate increase request as an attempt to “close the gap” between its rates and those charged by Southern California Edison, the Rosemead-based utility that is seeking regulatory approval to merge with SDG&E.;

But even with the proposed increase, Hansen said, SDG&E; would “still be the lowest cost major utility providing service in the state of California.”

“It’s a desperation bid, pure and simple,” Shames said. “They’re trying to close the embarrassing rate gap between SDG&E; and Edison . . . . What they’re doing here, in effect, is seeking a 10% rate hike to subsidize the 10% rate decrease (that Edison has) promised after the merger.”

Shames described SDG&E;’s rate increase request as “unwarranted . . . they’re not going to get it approved by the PUC.”

SDG&E;, which has sought two electric rate increases since 1985, last year asked the PUC to approve a $91-million rate increase. The PUC eventually granted SDG&E; a $51-million increase, Hansen said.

While Hansen declined to comment on future rate filings, he acknowledged that “it does look like upward pressure on rates even beyond this filing . . . I’d love to say decrease . . . but it appears to be increases for SDG&E.;”

For the past two years, Rosemead-based Edison and San Francisco-based Pacific Gas & Electric have been charging higher rates for electricity than SDG&E;, which serves residents and commercial customers in San Diego and southern Orange counties.