Many central Pennsylvania homeowners were shocked when they got their electric bills in January. Some electric customers received bills than were higher than expected and in more than few cases -- by a lot.

PPL Electric Utilities, which covers most of the region increased its rates in December and prices have nearly doubled in the past two years.

PPL also had an issue with billing in December that had an impact on what many customers were paying.

What’s behind the higher bills and is there anything electric customers can do about it?

On The Spark Thursday, Ryan Hill, Vice President of Corporate Communications with PPL Electric Utilities indicated their default rates increased by 18% December 1, 2022. He said the war in Ukraine is one of the factors that led to the rate hike,"It's created tighter supplies for natural gas. As Europe tried to wean itself off of natural gas from Russia. Heading into winter there was an effort by the U.S., I think, to ship more liquefied natural gas over to (Europe). To help our allies and boost our stores heading into winter. That's certainly, again, that war has really kind of disrupted the markets for a number of things. And it's probably contributed to rising costs of goods and services for many of the things that folks buy." Natural gas is used for power plants.

Hill also said constraints to power supplies was also a factor.