The V.I. Public Services Commission granted the Water and Power Authority’s petition to reconsider a June order lowering electric rates for Virgin Islanders, staying the reduction for at least a month.

The stay came after a brief PSC meeting Thursday, one month after the PSC voted to reduce the electric Levelized Energy Adjustment Clause rate of 22 cents per kilowatt-hour by 5.2 cents. The utility responded to the decision by calling it a “deliberate, ill-considered decision” that would lower WAPA’s budget by $2.5 million every month.

“I fully understand the desire to provide rate relief to the customers of the Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority,” Chief Executive Karl Knight said in a statement last month. “We all share that same desire, and WAPA has been working aggressively to get to that point, but we must do so in a responsible manner that does not immediately jeopardize our ability to provide electric and potable water services in the Virgin Islands.”

During a June 30 meeting of the WAPA governing board, Knight told board members that the PSC’s “considerations on the LEAC side do not take into consideration the shortfalls on the base rate side and do not take into consideration making the company whole, and what the company needs from an operating perspective.”

The PSC is expected to return its decision during its next regular meeting on Aug. 12. If the commission reaffirms its June order, general counsel Boyd Sprehn said Thursday that the utility would then have 60 days to appeal the PSC’s decision in V.I. Superior Court, which would further stay the original order.

At the utility’s urging, the electric LEAC has held steady at 22.22 cents per kilowatt-hour for years, and WAPA has repeatedly maintained that the rate is necessary to keep the struggling utility afloat. The PSC’s consultants have periodically argued in favor of lowering it, particularly given projected energy production savings associated with the commissioning of the St. Thomas power plant’s Wartsila generators.

In December, Jamshed Madan of Georgetown Consulting Group recommended that the PSC start passing some of those savings on to WAPA customers.

“The ratepayers have been denied potential savings for over a decade — that the management auditor had identified — and are entitled to some savings now that some additional efficiencies have been implemented,” he said, recommending a reduction to 21.56 cents per kilowatt-hour. “It’s a very small decrease, but it’s a decrease indicating some change in the right direction.”

He recommended a steeper decrease in June, which the PSC adopted.

WAPA ratepayers have long complained about inflated or bizarre electric bills. Since a disastrous first attempt at installing advanced metering infrastructure left thousands of electric meters offline or unreadable, the utility has had to estimate bills for many of its customers. In February, the utility moved forward with a four-year, $30 million contract with Itron to replace the AMI system. WAPA tapped disaster recovery consultants Witt O’Brien’s to manage the project in June.