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By Aliss Higham and Alice Gibbs
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Missouri's second-largest electricity provider is looking to increase household energy bills by approximately $17 a month, citing investments in power generation, improvements to the electrical grid and rising operating costs.
Evergy Missouri West announced on Tuesday that it had filed a request with the Missouri Public Service Commission (MPSC) to review its electricity rates.
The proposal would increase bills by $17.25 a month, or $207 annually, for a typical residential customer consuming 1,005 kilowatt-hours of electricity.
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The rate is yet to be approved, meaning there are no immediate changes to bills for its customers.
Evergy was formed through the 2018 merger of Great Plains Energy and Westar Energy and operates two regulated utilities in Missouri: Evergy Missouri Metro, which primarily serves the Kansas City area, and Evergy Missouri West, which serves communities in western Missouri outside the Metro service territory. The proposed rate increase applies only to Evergy Missouri West, which serves more than 340,000 customers.
The company explained that the request is linked to significant expansions of company-owned energy generating infrastructure. This includes the Foxtrot Energy Center and Sunflower Sky Energy Center. These are expected online in spring 2027, providing a combined 172 MW of solar power, according to Evergy; this is enough to power around 34,000 homes.
It is also seeking to recover costs relating to new natural-gas generation plants that are due to enter service in 2029, 2030 and 2032, providing 1,065 MW of power.
"Evergy Missouri West customers have the lowest rates of all our customers and some of the lowest in the Midwest and the nation," said David Campbell, Evergy chairman and chief executive officer, in a statement.
"The investments included in this request will add new power plants and strengthen the system serving our Missouri West customers. At the same time, revenue from new data centers is helping reduce the amount we are requesting."
Newsweek reached out to Evergy and the Missouri Public Service Commission via email for comment and is awaiting responses.
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Data Centers Expected To Reduce Costs
In the announcement, Evergy said that it anticipates two large data centers will reduce the rate request by $61 million annually.
This is because large data center customers will pay a premium compared to other large energy users. Evergy said this will protect communities from taking on the costs of more energy use in the area by data centers.
"Our large customer rate structure allows the revenue from data centers to put downward pressure on rates for all other customers, while providing important protections against shifting the costs of serving those data centers to our existing customers," Campbell said.
There is also an unusual profit-sharing proposal put forward by the company. In its statement, Evergy is proposing an earnings-sharing mechanism. This means that, if its profit exceeds the return permitted by regulators, 65 percent of earnings above that threshold would be returned to customers.
Proposal Under Consideration
The filing put forward by Evergy begins an 11-month review by the Missouri Public Service Commission in which regulators, consumer advocates and others can propose changes and counterproposals. Customers will also get the chance to make comments and testify at public hearings about the proposal in 2027.
Until the proposed increase is approved, there will be no immediate changes to bills for customers.
The request to rise bills comes as households are already feeling the pressure of utility bill costs. The National Energy Assistance Directors Association (NEADA) reported that the average U.S. residential electricity bill rose from about $121 a month in 2021 to $156 in 2025, an increase of nearly 29 percent.
Around 21.5 million households—roughly one in six—were behind on energy bills as of its 2026 report.
Raises Requested Elsewhere
Evergy are not the only company looking to raise prices. A day before their filing, Minnesota Power said changing industrial demand was also contributing to pressure on rates as it requested to raise prices for its roughly 150,000 customers.
The company asked Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (MPUC) to approve a $134 million increase; this would increase residential customers bills by around $24 a month.
Unlike Evergy, Minnesota Power explicitly said its current rate request is not related to a recently approved proposed data center in Hermantown.
It does, however, argue that, once that facility is operating, adding a big 24/7 customer should help others by spreading the system's fixed costs across a broader customer base.
Newsweek reached out to Minnesota Power via email for comment and is awaiting a response.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Rebecca Flood and James Debens
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