JULY POWER RATES RISING A BIT

The local power rate in the coming month of July will rise slightly compared with the current month of June, going from $0.10138 to $0.10200.  TVA’s fuel cost is kicking the rate up.

The ‘summer’ AUB base rate went into effect in June at $0.07568.  This rate stays the same through September.  But TVA adjusts the fuel cost up or down every month.   For the current month of June, it is a $0.02570 but will rise to $0.02632 in July.

“As I said last month, we really had hoped that TVA would keep the fuel cost down to a level that would not push the final rate to 10 cents and beyond.  But that did not happen in June and will not happen in July.  We hold out hope for better fuel costs as the summer months progress,” said AUB’s Wayne Scarbrough.

AUB’s gets a varying fuel charge from TVA each month.  Some months it goes up, sometimes it falls.  The fuel rate charged by TVA is different from the power rate they charge to AUB.

“We pay TVA for the fuel charge and we pay them a power rate charge.  AUB has its portion of the power rate to cover our costs locally.  These costs are combined to get our overall rate,” Scarbrough explained.

AUB’s power rate has increased less than eight percent in the past 25 years.  TVA has increased its power rate by more than 62-percent in fewer than 20 years.

About 83 cents of every dollar that AUB’s power division collects go to TVA for wholesale power.