Home and business owners will be paying more for power starting next month and again early next year.
The provincial government approved SaskPower's 4 per cent increase request last week which takes effect as of September 1. They also rubber-stamped a second 4 per cent increase come April 1, 2023.
Don Morgan, the minister responsible for SaskPower, said unchanged rates for the last four years played a factor in the pair of increases.
"During that time, most of it recently, there's been a marked increase in the cost of natural gas, which is the primary source they generate electricity from," he said. "The natural gas now has got carbon tax on it, so that compounds and adds to it."
Each rate hike is expected to cost the average house roughly $5 more per month. And according to SaskPower, small business customers will experience an increase of $15 monthly in 2022-23 and another $15 monthly in 2023-24.
"We felt that it was a way for people to get accustomed to the idea of it going up and spread it across two years," Morgan said was the reasoning behind the increases being broken up.