Image: TVA President Jeff Lyash & TVA Offices in Chattanooga, TN Image Credit: TVA & TVA web team / CC
The Tennessee Conservative Staff –
The Tennessee Valley Authority Board of Directors voted on Thursday to increase base rates for electricity by 5.25%, making this the largest increase in sixteen years.
The rate increase, which will go into effect on October 1, comes after an increase of 4.5% last year. In the 2023 fiscal year, the average homeowner’s bill was about $138, so those homes will see an increase of about $4.35 per month.
TVA officials say the increase was necessitated by rising interest rates and more demand for electricity, as well as “to fund ongoing construction and energy development.”
President Jeff Lyash also says the company has worked to keep costs as low as possible.
“At TVA, we don’t like price increases any more than you do, and that’s why we continually work to reduce expenses by hundreds of millions of dollars each year. We have done everything possible to absorb costs as we invest in the reliability of our existing plants, construct new generation to keep up with growth, and maximize solar to produce more carbon-free energy,” said Lyash.
TVA says that, despite the increase, their rates for residential customers still fall below 70% of other utility companies in the U.S. while industrial rates are below 90%.
Critics say TVA is not transparent enough with customers throughout the budget-making process.
This most recent rate increase comes as part of their 2025 fiscal budget, which Stephen Smith, executive director for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, argues was approved without releasing it to the public in advance or obtaining any sort of outside review.
Smith says that most utilities that are investor-owned must provide that information to the public and to independent regulators.
Lyash says the company hopes this will be the last rate increase for a while.
“Our objective is that this is the last rate increase for several years, but I always put a caveat with that because we don’t know exactly what will happen with regulations, interest rates or supply costs,” Lyash said.
2 Responses
Yup, lucifer’s dimmercrap ran TVA, killing us with dimmercrap solar to produce more carbon-free energy boondoggle.
TVA was supposed to help the people of the Tennessee Valley states. WE gave up homesteads where our forefathers lived and were buried or died. We gave up a clean and wild river that teemed with fish that were safe to eat. Some of our men died building the damns and power plants and the people said , they died to give us a better life with electricity that we could afford, to aid our lives. The people who live in the states that contain the TVA power system should benefit first and primarily , from any and all operations of TVA. We got cheap and abundant electricity at first and that soothed us of our losses. But we also got exploitation, pollution, environmental degradation and no longer affordable power for many who live here. Maybe they should raise the sales rates by whatever they think they need, to the out of area customers that use our power generated from our lands and the river they converted to industrial uses. Power sold to the East coast, northern states and Florida ,Louisiana or west of the Mississippi should be a higher rate than our local Valley State residents. We paid a high price for this power in lives, land, forest, clean water, animals and fish. The resulting forest destruction barged down the waterway, aluminum, coal and other mines that resulted from the TVA Damns and later the Tom Bigbee Waterway additional development. The mercury and other toxin levels ended the once large and popular Tennessee river catfish harvest and all the fish are eaten with warnings to limit consumption or avoid it. They want to raise the cost by over 5% this winter?!! They should be providing us free electricity in Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and Kentucky! They raped our lands and helped destroy our fishery and our power helped win a world war, what a contradiction in results. I am grateful for what low cost power did for our standard of living and am hopeful we can continue to clean up and mitigate the damages caused by the Damns and other power plants located in the Valley area. But I am not happy with the current cost of power for the residential or business consumer here in the Tennessee Valley Area. TVA should seek to raise revenues coming from outside of The Valley first and primarily, lower administrative cost, seek more efficiency in all operations and offer the lowest possible rates to Tennessee Valley containing states customers. If They do not waste any money on solar or wind power they will be more efficient than with expending money on these wasteful and unreliable energy sources. The Governor of Tennessee should demand of TVA to lower the proposed increase or eliminate it completely for state residents.