Due to one of Fulton's power sources under performing, the city has a just-under $500,000 deficit year-to-date.
Fulton's utility board will have a preliminary 2015 budget at its Oct. 27 meeting. At that time, Darrell Dunlap, superintendent of utilities for Fulton, said the board will have a better idea of whether customers will see a rate increase next year.
The city owns a small percentage of the plant at the Prairie State Generating Co., located in Washington County, Illinois. Prairie State has had unplanned outages this year. The city's 2014 budget assumed that Prairie State's two units would each produce power at full load 80 percent of the time. Neither unit produced at full load 80 percent of the time, which caused the city to purchase power from the open market.
Prairie State supplies power across several states, including Missouri and Illinois. Fulton purchased five megawatts in each of the plant's two units. Together, the two generators produce 1,600 megawatts of power.
The city will consider the Prairie State's units' performance when it creates the cities budget for 2015.