NIPSCO might be foisting a 16 percent rate hike on customers all at once, after all.

After proposing a two-step increase between now and 2010, the utility announced recently it will seek to convince the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission to allow it to change its plans.

While Northern Indiana Public Service Company spokesman Nick Meyer said the company hasn't decided exactly what to ask for, it seems certain NIPSCO?wants to levy the entire electric increase in 2009.

That's because power from NIPSCO's Sugar Creek electric generating plant in West Terre Haute unexpectedly became available this month.

NIPSCO announced the proposed two-step rate increase in late August, arguing the added revenue was needed to cover higher operating and maintenance costs, and to bring Sugar Creek on line.

Sugar Creek was under contract to deliver power to 13 eastern states and the District of Columbia through May 31, 2010, however.

So NIPSCO had been planning its rate case on the assumption Sugar Creek's power would be dispatched into the Midwest around June 1, 2010.

The company could then ask for an increase to cover the added costs of acquiring the new plant.

But in a news release last week, the company said it had successfully negotiated to bring Sugar Creek into the Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator, Inc. -- serving Indiana and 10 other Midwestern states --beginning Dec. 1, 2008.

Jerry Polk, an attorney with the Citizens Action Coalition, said the watchdog group is "skeptical of NIPSCO's claims."

"We haven't had a chance to look at them closely yet, so we aren't certain what to think," Polk said.

The utility has a rate case scheduled to appear before the IURC in Indianapolis in early January.

The IURC will make the final ruling on the rates, and NIPSCO will receive a decision in late 2009 or early 2010.