Rate Changes Requested By Louisville Gas And Electric And Kentucky Utilities

ALLENTOWN, Pa., June 8, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The following news releases were issued today by PPL Corporation's regulated utility subsidiaries in Kentucky:

LG&E Requests Rate Change for Improved Service and Reliability Increase amounts to less than 25 cents per day for electric and natural gas customers, to be effective January 2013, if approved by the Kentucky Public Service Commission

Louisville Gas and Electric Company announced today it plans to file a request with the Kentucky Public Service Commission later this month to increase base electric rates by $62.1 million, primarily to recover costs associated with improving service and reliability. The company is also requesting a $17.2 million base natural gas rate increase.

LG&E and its sister utility, Kentucky Utilities Company, have invested more than $1 billion over the last 29 months to meet energy demands and improve service and reliability. More than 4,000 generation, transmission and electric and gas distribution projects have occurred during that time.

Some of the largest investments were to meet customers' continued growing energy needs and enhance reliability — the new 585-megawatt unit at the Trimble County 2 Generating Station, one of the cleanest coal-fired units in the country, upgrades to the distribution and transmission systems and upgrades at Ohio Falls, the hydroelectric plant on the Ohio River. LG&E also made considerable investments in its natural gas business as part of its continued 615-mile natural gas main replacement project and increased leak surveying.

In addition, LG&E is requesting a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity for a proposed five-year natural gas line program, similar to what many other gas utilities around the country have done, to relieve customers from the responsibility of maintaining the part of the gas infrastructure called the "riser" — the pipe from the ground to the meter — and allow LG&E to make necessary repairs on it. As part of the program, LG&E would proactively replace certain gas risers and take ownership of the natural gas line segment that runs from the customer property line to the LG&E gas meter. The costs associated with this program and the continuation of the gas main replacement project would be recovered under a new rate mechanism called a "gas line tracker," which would appear as a separate line item on LG&E natural gas customers' bills.

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