Go to AEP Action and let loose.
Some of the stories uploaded there, by the way, are full of anger ... at government. An example:
And considering those who cannot work....female, 86 years old, worked hard all her life, lives on 700 dollars a month. Has one prescription per month her needs, house is small, modest but the electric bill was 378 for Jan. Now figure it out...add it up...with the cost of the grocery bill, taxes. insurance and any needed things ... how can anyone make it on that? She has no car but everything else is so expensive she can't afford one anyway...why are we allowing our government to treat our elderly citizens with such disrespect? Not to mention the ones who are working, paying their bills and they receive a 700 dollar electric bill....where are our lawmakers who are 'working' for us????Lawmakers working for us. I remember the day long ago.
Some would argue that lawmakers have actually caused this catastrophe. Who, after all, sets utility rates? Beyond that, what other publically traded company is guaranteed a specific profit margin by Virginia law? And who saddled AEP with outrageous environmental compliance surcharges running in the tens of millions, charges that are simply passed on to consumers? And when AEP attempts to comply to federal emissions standards, and the cost of that compliance runs in the billions, who's to blame?
Then there's the whole monopoly issue.
Angry customers look to government for relief. My view is that any more "relief" and we're all going to be out in the cold.
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A description of AEP Action as provided by its Facebook page:
Join Delegate Bill Carrico and other elected officials in opposing another request by Appalachian Power increase in Southwest Virginia. The web site, AEPAction.org, will be re-launched again soon to give you a voice with the Virginia SCC to help fight this request. Please forward this group and share it with your friends on Facebook to help.
5 comments:
Jerry - the environmental compliance thing is the red herring being thrown out by AEP. Their compliance costs are no different than any other public utility in the nation.
The fact that they delayed any kind of investment in these mandatory practices to protect the air that you and i breath downwind of their plants is their fault.
The main increases are being instituted to ensure their shareholders a profit in the face of decling energy use, increased fuel costs, and the implementation of required business improvements that they elected to ignore while they were making huge sums of money selling power on the free market.
Basically, folks are being asked to help one type of company remain profitable when every other company is struggling.
Do not fall for the bait of the environmental compliance being the cause of this. it's a trap. Dominion, Duke, LGE, etc are not pulling that crapola on their rate payers.
I feel for you. We had AEP in Fort Wayne and our electric bills were astronomical. Since moving to Central IN we have Indianapolis Power and Light and our bills are about 1/3 of AEP's AND we don't have power outages all the time.
SIS
I accept your point, anon 1. However, $3.8 billion in emissions compliance is being paid for by consumers. If you want to blame AEP for that, fine. But it's not AEP that is paying $3.8 billion for emissions compliance. It's us.
I'm all for nuke energy. you can even built it in my backyard.
90% (or something like that) of electricity in France comes as a result of nuke energy (love their cheese, too).
I'm also on board with burning coal to produce power.
let's make it happen. pressure lawmakers.
yelh
$3.8B in improvements to coal fired plants that began needing the work done in the mid-1980's. the company delayed compliance. I suggest they did so willingly knowing that they could profit in the interim then pass on the costs to the ratepayers WHILE continuing to make profits in the future.
Again, it's a red herring. Compliance is something everyone has to do because I, and you, don't want to breathe air that is filled with gunk. I like being able to see mountains and have trout in them, instead of acid rain.
Remember, Duke, Dominion, PG&E, and many other companies are not raising rates now as they decided to comply much earlier. This is having economic impacts as those companies are in a position to offer energy incentives to assist in economic development activities.
AEP's inept management and short-term capital investment thinking is driving these increases. Pathetic.
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