Today the Indiana Utilities Regulatory Commission denied Evansville based Vectren Corporation’s (NYSE: VTC) request to add a new fee to ratepayer’s electric bills.
Last fall, Vectren sought regulatory approval to add a $1.08 monthly charge to residential bills. Vectren said it needed the money to cover $32 million in upgrades to the turbine blades but assured the public that the upgrade would lead to lower fuel costs that would offset the impact of the fee to ratepayers.
The request for the rate increase led to a series of articles by the City County Observer, a petition by Evansville City Councilman John Friend against the fee, and an IURC field hearing in Evansville where a capacity crowd of citizens testified about the hardships of paying the highest electricity rates in Indiana. Occupy Evansville also made the Vectren Building a major focus of their brief time of riverfront gatherings.
This denial is also the culmination of many years of work by Indiana State Representative Gail Riecken to balance the best interests of the people of her district with the needs of the utility industry.
Good work CCO and John Friend and other supporters. I love it when a plan comes together when the correct/proper thing is decided.
Johnson Control is next—tougher—- but winnable.
Energy delivery is a monopolistic system that should just be made public. Unless we find ways to make competition a possibility, it needs to be taken out of private hands…
That might shock some of you who know me as a libertarian who urges private solutions to problems, but in this instance, I see no mechanism for true competition, which is driving the engine for lower prices.
The only other recourse is to start putting up windmills and solar arrays in our yards. Then Vectren would just go whining to the IURC that we weren’t using enough again.
When their contract is up, the people of this region should just demand their energy delivery be taken care of like their water and sewer is. Last I checked, the water department didn’t have a giant, shiny corporate office plaza taking up half the riverfront.
Actually there are two alternatives to a stockholder-owned electric utility. The first is simple: Request that the IURC allow other electric utilities to sell power over Vectren’s distribution system. The other is more complicated: Convert Vectren to a customer-owned electric cooperative or terminate their franchise to provide electricity to Vanderburgh County.
Don’t let anyone con you into thinking that we don’t have options.
I don’t understand how that could possibly work… Just the science of AC itself wouldn’t really permit it. The logistics of power plant placement, etc. It wouldn’t allow competition over the same lines. There is no way to meter that. The grid would have to be either broken up, or a second entire grid installed beside the other for competition.
It’s not like a phone system where you had AT&T forced to allow competition over their systems. Wouldn’t work like that, I don’t think.
What I think is nonsense is the assertion that Southern Indiana isn’t sunny enough to garner some savings through private solar and private wind farming. I know solar tech is still high in initial setup cost, but wind is not that bad. That’s the only real source of competition I see – the free energy all around us.
Way to go CCO. The people of Evansville owe you guys a debt of gratitude for this $32 Million and for the $5 Million per year that Weinzapfel tried to steal from them
Way to go John Friend!
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