"On Tuesday, March 29th, the PSC voted to protect NorthWestern’s customers when it sided with MEIC, Sierra Club, and Earthjustice, as well as the Montana Consumer Counsel. By a 3-2 vote the PSC ruled that NorthWestern couldn’t pass on its customers over $8 million in costs when Colstrip Unit 4 broke down for 6 months in 2013. NorthWestern tried to hide the cause of the breakdown from the PSC. When Earthjustice intervened on behalf of MEIC and Sierra Club, it insisted NorthWestern come clean and provide its internal analysis of why the plant broke down. Months later, NorthWestern finally coughed up the report and it became clear that NorthWestern just wanted to quietly charge its customers instead of dealing with the hassle of trying to force those parties responsible for the breakdown to pay those costs."

If interested, read more at:

http://meic.org/2016/03/c...EICcontent

Yes, but we are MDU customers and the PSC approved the MDU 13.3% rate increase (down from 21%) rate increase effective on Friday, I believe.

I believe MDU buys electricity on the open market from Northwestern Energy. This story about NorthWestern Energy being ordered to refund MT clients $8.2 million from Colstrip outage may be of interest locally. I believe it was also published in the Miles City Star but I could not locate a link.

http://www.greatfallstrib.../82390370/