Local Power Rates to Edge Down in May

Media Contact:

Wayne Scarbrough

(423) 745-4501 ext. 6002

wscarbrough@aub.org

April 19, 2018

ATHENS, Tenn. – Local electric power rates for May will drop slightly compared to April as a result of a lower monthly fuel charge.

The local residential power rate for May for Athens Utilities customers will be $0.08663 per kilowatt hour compared to April’s rate of $0.08734.

 “As with April, May is deemed a ‘transition’ billing month in TVA’s rate scheme.  The base rate for power in transition months is $0.06641,” said AUB’s Wayne Scarbrough.

To arrive at the full retail rate, add the base rate to the month’s TVA fuel charge of $0.02022 per kilowatt hour.

In the fall, October and November are deemed transition months as well.

 “We are still experiencing low overnight temperatures and even some low daytime temps.  But we are officially in spring, and this is typically a period of lower than average energy use and therefore lower monthly energy bills,” he said.

Scarbrough said that AUB and other distributors of TVA-generated power continue to monitor closely the federal agency’s rate change positioning, its ongoing plans for more rate increases, and the federal agency’s strategic public communications about the plans.

TVA is getting a healthy amount of scrutiny from local utilities across the Valley that purchase TVA power, such as AUB, and some notable inquiries from their own internal examiners such as the TVA Inspector General.

“We, distributors like AUB, are the only truly invested ombudsmen for our local ratepayers. We experience firsthand and can represent to TVA their voices and, often, their everyday struggles just to get by,” Scarbrough said.

“Distributors such as AUB that serve the nine million people of the Valley are public power utilities, locally owned and accountable,” added AUB’s Eric Newberry.

“TVA also is a public power entity accountable to their sole source of revenue—the ratepayers of the Valley—not a private company owned by investors from around the world.  Every piece of TVA power infrastructure, every corporate jet, every helicopter has been paid for by the people of the Valley,” he said.

“At a time when the agency is on an annual roll of raising rates, TVA should be fully and openly accountable when it comes to how they spend ratepayer money, what they spend it on, and why the expenditures are in the best interest of Valley ratepayers,” he said.

TVA has raised AUB’s wholesale cost of power by more than thirty percent in recent years.

“We at AUB have not had a local power rate increase in more than 10 years.  But that can’t continue when our operating costs to run the community’s utility increase every year,” Newberry said.

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