The Brief
- TECO bills have gone up by $8.88 a month for the average customer.
- The latest increase is the fourth in 13 months, putting a strain on working families.
- TECO says higher bills are driven by hurricane recovery costs.
TAMPA, Fla. – Once again, TECO customers are seeing higher electric bills after a new base rate increase. This marks the fourth time TECO bills have gone up over the last 13 months.
What we know:
For a typical TECO customer — using 1,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity — this latest increase means paying $8.88 more on average each month.
The increase comes on top of other changes approved over the past year. Those include a storm recovery surcharge, fuel cost adjustments and a base rate hike that took effect in January 2025.
Many customers such as Steven Stevens say the repeated increases are hitting fixed-income households the hardest.…