As Spring Arrives, Local Power Rates Fall
Media Contact:
Wayne Scarbrough
(423) 745-4501 ext. 6002
wscarbrough@aub.org
March 20, 2018
ATHENS, Tenn. – Local electric power rates for April will drop by about 4.4 percent compared to March.
The local residential power rate for April for Athens Utilities customers will be $0.08734 per kilowatt hour compared to March’s rate of $0.09132.
The decrease, according to AUB’s Wayne Scarbrough, comes as a result of a lower monthly fuel charge from TVA and a move from wintertime base rates to transition-season base rates.
“In TVA’s rate scheme, April and May are springtime ‘transition’ periods when the weather is moving from cold to moderate. The base rate for power in the transition months is about three percent lower than the winter season base rate, so that accounts for the majority of the drop in month-over-month price,” Scarbrough said.
In the fall, October and November are deemed transition months as well. June through September are TVA’s summer billing months and have the highest annual base rates. December through March are winter billing months.
Scarbrough said now is the time of year when energy use is typically at an annual low.
“The transition months are a period where you don’t have to crank your heating system or your air conditioning to stay comfortable. As a result, these fall and spring months are when AUB customer bills are usually at their lowest level of the year,” he said.
Scarbrough said that AUB and other distributors of TVA-generated power continue to monitor closely the federal agency’s rate change positioning and strategic public communications about the plans.
“As a result of scrutiny from local utilities across the region that buy TVA power, utilities such as AUB that serve the nine million people of the Valley, TVA has stepped up its public relations campaign regarding why they need continued rate increases from our communities,” Scarbrough said.
TVA has raised AUB’s wholesale cost of power by more than thirty percent in recent years while AUB has had no local rate increases to bolster its power operations.
“Despite the rhetoric you may read from TVA’s media group, it is the local power utilities in local communities that have kept retail rates as low as possible by squeezing margins and avoiding the type spending TVA continues,” said AUB’s Eric Newberry.
“We don’t have jets. We don’t have executives with multi-million dollar salaries. We don’t raise rates every fall and then spend $100 million on year-end bonuses,” he said.
“We just work to serve our local communities in the way that public power is supposed to serve. TVA is mandated by Congress to set rates at the lowest feasible level. We want to see them return their focus to that mandate,” Newberry said.
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