Meeting Seattle’s Electricity Needs While Delivering on Affordability

As we become more reliant on electricity to travel, manage extreme weather impacts, do our work, and even socialize, we must make wise decisions to maintain and grow our infrastructure. Not doing so would mean experiencing more outages, which would disrupt day-to-day life.

Because of higher costs and demand, Seattle City Light expects to raise residential rates an average of $10 a month, in 2027 and again in 2028. These funds will allow City Light to make new investments in wind and solar, upgrade technologies, and take care of their maintenance backlog.

We need to continue investing in our infrastructure to keep up with demand, but we also recognize that our city is facing an affordability crisis. And for some families, adding $120 a year to the utility bill can cause major disruptions.

As we introduce smart policies that require new data centers to cover their electricity costs and not pass it along to customers, ensure that no child attending Seattle Public Schools goes hungry, and that renters are not taken advantage of through things like junk fees, we appreciate Councilmember Dan Strauss taking the lead and updating the Utility Discount Program to include more people. With legislation passing out of City Council, Mayor Katie Wilson signed it into law today, Friday, July 17, 2026.

Seattle’s utility discount program has been around since the 1980s, but only a third of the eligible households participate. Also, it is based on the state median income, which is much lower than the area median income (AMI), so it has not been reaching many of our impacted families. Updating the program to use the AMI and expanding it to households earning less than 60 percent of it stretches the program’s reach to 31,000 new low-income households. Expanded eligibility starts January 1, 2027, at the same time rate increases are implemented.   

With one application, customers can apply for multiple utility assistance programs. Learn more and apply at http://seattle.gov/UtilityBillHelp. If you do not qualify now, check back in 2027.

Good governance is not about spending the absolute least, it’s about delivering real value for Seattle families.