AS “WINTER” CONTINUES, TVA RAISES AUB’S POWER RATE
February is the third of four months known as the “winter” season in TVA’s rate classifications, and TVA’s fuel rate is going up somewhat for the month, which raises AUB’s power rate.
TVA has announced that their fuel cost adjustment for February will rise compared to January’s, from $0.03039 up to $0.03541, taking AUB’s local power rate up a bit to $0.10785 from the current $0.10283.
“AUB’s part of the rate is unchanged from last month, but TVA is raising their fuel cost again,” said AUB’s Wayne Scarbrough.
AUB’s portion of the rate for the month is $0.07244, exactly the same as it was in December and January. It will be at that level through March 2023 during the “winter” rate season.
“We certainly hope that TVA gets control of their fuel costs and can bring this fuel charge down. With AUB’s rate remaining the same month after month, TVA’s fuel charge is what is driving the final rate up well over 10 cents per kilowatt hour,” Scarbrough said.
“We continue to push them to keep their overall expenditures down so that their fuel cost doesn’t affect our customers as much,” he continued. “We are urging them to keep all of their costs in control just as much as local power distributors do.”
TVA has struggled recently in the eyes of many power distributors such as AUB. Over Christmas, the federal agency had to turn to distributors such as AUB and ask them to perform “rolling blackouts” two days in a row, because TVA did not have all of its generation units operating.
TVA gave out $161 million in year-end bonuses late last year.
AUB’s power rate has increased less than eight percent in the past 25 years. TVA, however, has increased its rate by more than 62-percent in fewer than 20 years.
“Those are simple facts. We at AUB have gone up less than eight percent in more than 25 years versus TVA’s increase of well more than 60 percent in less time. We have a hard time understanding why TVA can’t operate more like a true public power provider,” Scarbrough said.
About 83 cents of every dollar that AUB’s power division collects go to TVA for wholesale power.
