PPL customers should expect to see an increase in the amount they pay for electricity next year.

State regulators announced Thursday that they have approved a request from the utility to raise the rates it charges customers to distribute power to their homes.The increase applies to any customer who receives a bill from PPL, regardless of whether or not they use a different electric supplier to generate their power.Under the rate hike approved by the Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission, a typical customer using 1,000 kWh will see their bill increase by 5.11 percent, about $7.53 per month.That is actually lower than the amount that the utility first requested when it petitioned the PUC in March. Under that proposal, customers using 1,000 kWh per month would have seen their rates increase by 6.9 percent, or about $10.19 per month.The increase will produce an additional $124 million in revenue for the utility next year.PPL officials said in a press release Tuesday that the additional funds will allow them to invest in their distribution network, ultimately reducing the number of outages that customers experience."We are in the midst of monumental improvements in the quality of service for our customers," said Greg Dudkin, PPL Electric Utilities president. "We have plans to reduce the number and duration of power outages even further, providing our customers with reliability that compares to the best electric companies in the nation."And PPL points out that customers who use the company for both generation and distribution will actually see their rates go down.In their press release, officials with the utility pointed out that they will be decreasing the amount they charge to generate energy.Several hearings were held over the summer to give the public the opportunity to weigh in on PPL's request. The state's office of the consumer advocate, as well as other government agencies, filed petitions opposing PPL's initial rate hike proposal, saying that it unfairly burdened the utility's low-income customers.The rate hike announced on Thursday was the result of a settlement between those parties that saw PPL give up ground on some demands in order to have the rate hike passed.