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Public Hearing Set On Gulf Power Rate Increase Proposal
September 1, 2013
The Florida Public Service Commission has scheduled a customer service hearing in Pensacola to hear about a Gulf Power Company rate increase.
Gulf Power is asking the Florida PSC to approve a two-step price increase to help pay for the largest power grid construction program in the history of the company. The first increase would not take effect until April 2014, and it would increase the total bill for a residential customer buying 1,000-kilowatt hours by $8.94 per month or 7.5 percent — from the current price of $118.88 to $127.82.
The second step of the increase — related to the new environmental requirements — would not occur until 2015 and would raise the monthly bill an additional $1.99.
Anyone wishing to speak for, or against, the rate increase is welcome at the PSC meeting on Tuesday, September 3 at 4 p.m. in the Hagler Auditorium at Pensacola State College. The hearing will continue until everyone wishing to speak is heard.
Gulf Power said over the next three years the company is building and replacing power lines and infrastructure — some more than 70 years old — to keep electricity flowing to its 430,000 customers. In addition, new lines and equipment are needed to comply with new mandatory federal environmental regulations.
Part of the new transmission line construction is to help the company comply with new federal environmental regulations that will change the way the company operates its plants and will require plants to be shut down at regular intervals. The new lines and equipment will be used to ensure voltage stability and reliable power flow while the plants are offline.
Pictured inset: Gulf Power crews making upgrades to a distribution line. Submitted photo for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.
Comments
11 Responses to “Public Hearing Set On Gulf Power Rate Increase Proposal”
Let me try that again:
Regarding building more coal fired power plants, no they are nasty, lead to deaths and are the worst form of fossil fuel in current use.
If we have to use fossil fuel, natural gas is the fuel to use. It is cleaner, produces fewer greenhouse gases or other pollutants and is safer to produce and transport.
The best current power source is nuclear power. It produces no greenhouse gas emissions and has no pollution. This is assuming the employees are sober, sane and conscientious workers. It needs to be placed where earthquakes and tsunamis won’t get to it and designed to withstand them anyway. A well designed nuclear power plant can produce a billion watts of electricity day and night, rain or shine, wind or no wind with only one ton of short-lived nuclear waste per year.
To keep that in perspective, the volume of waste would be less than a cubic meter of material per year (actually less than half that but I just figured the volume of a metric ton of water, not the more dense strontium and cesium waste, that would need to be mixed with glass to avoid dissolving in water and stored for a couple of hundred years until radioactivity dropped back to background levels).
This SHOULD be paid for by the investors, since they are the ones who benefit from the sale of electricity to us.
David for liquid metal reactors
and pyrometallurgical reprocessing
Well my Repulican neighbors are we also funding the Southern Company’s Pension program. Lets cut that cost out and use that money to upgrade the grid, assuming it needs upgrading.
Now wait a minute GULP power…After Ivan you told us the grid was completely destroyed (GULP used the 70 years of work down the drain overnight excuse back then) and we need a rate increase to upgrade/repair the system…So what has happened since Ivan?
coal no natural gas if fossil fuel nuclear no greenhouse emissions, no polution assuming sober, sane employees
as one here posted to the ECUA rate increase…
“ust a bump in the road…”
Sure why not my lights blink every time wind blows and rains maybe one day they can cut the tree off the transformer….. Or maybe it will just fall.. These people only care about money not safety. As far as ECUA they make their own rules.
I tend to think if Gulf Power had been proactive over the last 70 years, as most businesses should do, they would be in a far better position than they are now. What have they done with the great profits they have made over the last 70 years? Apparently it is obvious that they haven’t been investing in their company. Gulf Power is the one of the few companies that I read about on an annual basis that want their customers to front all of their “costs of doing business” and then they return all their profits to investors. How about asking the investors to front these expenses since they will recoup the costs through shareholder dividends over the life of the improvements?
Not anything anyone can do about the rates for power grid expansion for continuity of electric service, it is needed for the added load that is being put on the system daily. Me, for one, think power and water are still two of the cheapest commodities in our country, compared to inflation on other goods & services. They are also two things that WE have control over our usage, no one to blame but ourselves for the amount required every month.
As for the rate increases for additional environmental compliance issues, we should ALL be contacting our local, state, and federal legislators to have these restrictions eased. We probably have the cleanest air in the larger part of the world (I have no numbers to back this) and should petition these agencies to build new coal fired plants for electric power production. I’m not too sure how many of you know, but the U.S. Government has not licensed any construction of coal fired plants in many years, and want more wind & solar added that just doesn’t work in many areas of our country. Then there’s Nuclear, clean sustainable power, but it’s a many year permitting/approval process, and a 10 year build, so it’s a catch 22 on this one.. Big government making making decisions about our needs not always in our best interest. I, for one love to flip that switch & see those lights come on, & hope we can do it for a long time to come, but I also understand that there is inflation behind the scenes of getting that power to me..
Iceman for Coal Fired Generation – Coal means jobs
The monopoly called gulf power sticks it to us again. They need some competition. My power has been interrupted 6 times in the last week from a few seconds to almost one hour. I would call the PSC but that’s a waste of time. The southern co. has already bought them.
Here we go again…everything goes up except paychecks! That means stores will charge more to cover their costs and the elderly and low income people will suffer.
Why bother…ECUA is getting away with it……follow the leader.