The average Alaska Electric Light & Power customer will see about a $3.75 increase in his or her bill during the first three months of 2012, according to an email from a spokesman for the utility.
After electricity went out in Juneau Thursday morning, AEL&P switched on diesel generators to help power the town. Damage to the tower support system at Snettisham Hydroelectric Project caused power to stop coming to town from the generation facility located about 30 miles southeast of Juneau. That facility remained offline until Saturday afternoon. AEL&P’s Lake Dorothy and other hydro projects were able to provide about half of Juneau’s power needs, the email from AEL&P’s Scott Willis stated. This is more than the 40 percent of Juneau’s power AEL&P initially believed would come from hydro while Snettisham was down.
In all, AEL&P burned about $430,000 of diesel during the outage, Willis stated. This will cause a bump up in the cost of power adjustment, or COPA, AEL&P customers will pay during the first three months of 2012. The increase is one-half of a cent per kilowatt hour over the normal COPA, Willis states. This translates to an increase of about $3.75 per month to the average customer, Willis states.
Comments (10)
Add commentWhat caused the failure?
If it was due to faulty design or installation of the guy lines, why should the rate payers eat that expense?
Come on, Empire. This should be an easy one for you to dig into rather than just regurgitate an email from AELP. Or is ad revenue affecting your decision here?
Might as well turn it into a
Might as well turn it into a community ran co-op. We seem to be shouldering all the expenses anyway, just not getting the profits.
If Fred Meyer needs to
If Fred Meyer needs to increase its prices because of higher costs that the barge company charges due to a fuel surcharge, should that barge company or Fred's pick up that extra cost? No, Fred's will just increase the cost of goods to consumers. Same thing with AELP. It's called the "cost of doing business." Get over it.
Not really. Long term stuff
Not really. Long term stuff yes. But if the barge sinks, the barge lines will not pass the costs of the sunken barge, cleanup and damaged/destroyed freight on to Fred Meyers to in turn increase the cost of a box of Fruity Pebbles to $15/box. Its called insurance. The insurance company covers the replacement cost of a new barge and of the damaged freight. Maybe you should run a business before you try enlightening us as to how business works...
But it ain't a rate increase...
While I'm glad it's only going to be about $11 - $12 for the average ratepayer, Scott Willis should stop saying things like "It's not a rate increase... it's a surcharge." It makes him sound like he thinks his customers are idiots.
AuroraVista
No it's not.
1) Fred's would only raise their prices if their competitors also did the same, which they may not do in order to undercut them. AEL&P has no competitors.
2) A barge company's fuel surcharge is due to fluctuations in fuel prices, which is completely beyond anyone's control. Maintaining guywires and other electrical infrastructure so as to avoid breakdowns is AEL&P's direct responsibility.
Who's fault?
What caused the anchors to pull out of the ground? Poor design? The weather wasn't that severe. I thought the rate increase was supposed to give AELP a cushion to cover things like this.
AEL&P
I thought Hydro Power is supposed to be Cheap, how about looking into replacing that committee that approved the Pay-Hike.
Geeze People...
The increased costs of any business are always passed on to the customer. Is this town so full of government employees that grasping simple capitalistic principles is out of reach? I know, I know. When the money just mysteriously appears in your budget it's a really hard concept to fathom...
@gmpatton: please don't talk
@gmpatton: please don't talk down to people about "simple capitalistic principles" when you have them wrong (and they're actually economic principles not unique to capitalism).
Price elasticity dictates how much of an increased cost of business passes down to a consumer. For inelastic goods, more of the cost is passed down to consumers, and for elastic goods, less of the cost is passed to consumers. I don't believe there is a such thing as a perfectly elastic or perfectly inelastic good outside of economic theory, so the full cost is never passed down to the consumer for any good in the real world.