EPB electric rates climb 12 percent

By GINA KINSLOW
Glasgow Daily Times

GLASGOW February 27, 2008 02:11 pm

— Glasgow Electric Plant Board customers can expect their power bills to increase by 12 percent this spring.
The overall rate hike stems from two increases. One is a general rate increase of 7 percent, while the other is a fuel cost adjustment increase of 5 percent.
The increase will amount to about $7 a month, EPB superintendent William Ray said Tuesday night.
The rate increase is scheduled to go into effect April 1.
According to Ray, TVA has increased local power rates by 29 percent since 2003. Only twice during that time did electric rates remain unchanged — December 2003 and January 2007.
In December 2003, EPB gave TVA a five-year notice that it was severing its ties with the company and began searching for a new power supplier. The reason behind its decision to leave TVA was the increasing power rates.
In October 2006, while EPB was searching for a new power supplier, TVA lowered its rates by 4.5 percent, according to Ray.
At one point, EPB was in negotiations with EnviroPower, a company interested in building a coal-fired power plant in eastern Kentucky, which also was interested in becoming EPB’s new power supplier. The project fell to the wayside and EPB signed a new contract with TVA in January 2007.
“We really thought ... what is going to happen with TVA rates, and we would do these 20-year projections and we generally would assume maybe it would go up 1 percent a year,” Ray said. “If we had a better crystal ball, it would have really changed our shopping because it’s gone up much more than 1 percent per year. It’s really shocking.”
The reason for the rate increases, Ray said, is TVA's push for distributors to sell more power.
“We’re giving a growth credit for people who will add more consumption. We’re unleashing TVA’s economic industrial development forces ... constantly looking for anybody who would bring a new factory in and add more load,” he said. “But every day TVA is buying 25 percent of the energy that they sell. They’re having to buy from the open market.”