{"id":44113,"date":"2022-11-29T15:13:10","date_gmt":"2022-11-29T20:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/?p=44113"},"modified":"2022-11-29T15:13:14","modified_gmt":"2022-11-29T20:13:14","slug":"can-you-afford-georgia-powers-proposed-12-rate-hike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/?p=44113","title":{"rendered":"Can you afford Georgia Power’s proposed 12% rate hike?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Georgia Power<\/a> customers can ill afford a nearly 12% rate increase at a time rampant inflation is making it harder to buy food and fuel, more than a dozen witnesses told state energy regulators Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m tired of seeing companies making record profits \u2026 when good people working every day are not getting increases in their wages,\u201d Linda Pritchett, a city council candidate in South Fulton, told members of the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC}. \u201cPeople simply cannot afford this rate hike.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pritchett was among several current and former politicians to address the commission at the start of two days of hearings on Georgia Power\u2019s request to raise the average residential customer\u2019s bill by $16.29 a month starting Jan. 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Former state Sen. Vincent Fort, D-Atlanta, said the 12% rate hike is only the first of several the company is expected to bring before the commission in the next two to three years. Together, those increases could drive up rates as much as 45%, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you vote for this, you\u2019re about to send working people in Georgia into a crisis,\u201d Fort told commissioners. \u201cDon\u2019t raise these rates on Georgia working people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the public witnesses gave their testimony, representatives of Georgia Power defended the utility\u2019s rate increase request as necessary to make the capital investments required to strengthen the electric grid and maintain quality customer service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe operate a capital-intensive business,\u201d said Aaron Abramovitz, Georgia Power\u2019s chief financial officer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abramovitz pushed back against recommendations by the PSC\u2019s Public Interest Advocacy Staff to reduce the size of the proposed rate hike. Among other things, the staff is asking the commission to lower the return on equity (ROE) Georgia Power is seeking from 11% to 9.5%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAny radical reduction of the company\u2019s requested ROE \u2026 would be unprecedented and unwarranted, with such severe changes significantly impairing the company\u2019s financial integrity and its ability to raise capital at a reasonable cost upon reasonable terms for the benefit of customers,\u201d the CFO testified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The PSC staff also has recommended the commission order Georgia Power to reduce the operation and maintenance costs it can recover from ratepayers and reduce its electrical transmission and distribution investments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Michael Robinson, vice president of planning, operations, and policy at Georgia Power, said the company needs to make major investments in its transmission and distribution systems to replace aging infrastructure that is up to 70 years old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe company cannot delay or take shortcuts in implementing these grid investments,\u201d Abramovitz added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dan Walsh, a lawyer representing the PSC staff, objected to Abramovitz\u2019s use of the word \u201cradical\u201d in describing the staff\u2019s proposal to reduce the ROE requested by the company. Walsh said the average ROE awarded to utilities across the industry since 2020 is less than 9.5%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What’s Next?:<\/strong> The PSC, which held two rounds of hearings on the rate hike request earlier this fall, is scheduled to vote on the rates Dec. 20.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundatio<\/em>n<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Georgia Power customers can ill afford a nearly 12% rate increase at a time rampant inflation is making it harder to buy food and fuel, more than a dozen witnesses told state energy regulators Tuesday. \u201cI\u2019m tired of seeing companies making record profits \u2026 when good people working every day are not getting increases in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37475,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[8479,12132,12168],"class_list":["post-44113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family","tag-georgia-power","tag-public-service-commission","tag-state","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}