Empire Electric and their raised rates!

 

Taney County MO – Recently I noticed that some of my fellow county citizens were complaining about their electric bills, citing large apparent increases. I investigated this and found some potential reasons why their bills may have jumped!

1. Empire did, in fact, raise its rates recently! Back in September, “The Missouri Public Service Commission on Friday formally approved an agreement its staff and other parties had reached with The Empire District Electric Co. earlier this summer that will result in a monthly increase of $7.60 for an Empire customer using 1,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per month.” This increase went into effect on September 14, 2016! The current rate table for Empire is shown below;
    
   

Note that the Summer Season is the first four monthly billing periods billed on and after June 16, while the Winter Season will be the remaining eight monthly billing periods of the calendar year.

2. Billing by Empire is typically not for the last thirty days but rather about a half month past that point in time. Ergo, my electric bill that just arrived on the 31^st of January was actually for the period December 14, 2016 to January 16, 2017. Of some interest, however, in that later part of December we incurred much warmer temperatures than normal. My readings for that period of time are shown below. Note that were were about four warmer than what the 30 year average had been! Interesting....

In addition, the temps from January 1 to January 16, 2016 were also on the warm side of history reading almost five degrees above what is normal! So, one would think that my bill would be a little lower than last year, wouldn't one?

Interestingly, the kilowatt hours used were greater than the same period last year which further exacerbated a bill that had seen significant rate hikes! Is there something wrong here? Yes, I think that there is! Below is a direct comparison between 2016 and 2017 billings: