Kentucky Power customers could see a sticker shock despite efforts to mitigate rate increases.
The utility is asking the Kentucky Public Service Commission to approve a settlement that would raise customer rates 8% this year and 9% next year over current rates.
In a hearing in Frankfort on Tuesday, company president and operating chief Cynthia Wiseman told PSC chair Angie Hatton that the rates would go up again in the third year, by 12%.
“They'll be paying more,” Hatton said.
“Yeah, they would be paying more,” Wiseman said. “It goes up after the third year.”
Hatton said she worried that Kentucky Power would seek another rate increase by then.
“And that's, that's scary,” Hatton said. “Three years from now, what's going to happen, that's scary.”
Wiseman said the best solution would be to attract new industrial customers, including data centers, to bring the costs down.
Kentucky Power has a shrinking customer base in 20 eastern Kentucky counties. Those residents pay some of the highest bills in the region.
“A big part of that is that we're just seeing no growth in our territory,” Wiseman said. “So if we, you know, if we are able to attract new load and new customers to our territory. We're just not a growing region. And so our, you know, there's, there's nothing there to bring in that revenue.”
The Kentucky PSC has held three public comment hearings since November, in Pikeville and Hazard, and last week in Ashland.
Residents and local officials expressed unanimous opposition to the originally proposed 15% increase in residential rates.
The settlement was filed on Friday, but notably didn’t include the office of Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman.
In a statement on Monday, Coleman’s office said it opposes any Kentucky Power rate increase.
In West Virginia, meanwhile, Kentucky Power’s sister company, Wheeling Power, has notified the PSC in that state that it will file a proposal for a construction project at a power plant they share.
Wheeling and Kentucky Power each own 50% of the Mitchell coal plant near Moundsville, West Virginia, 200 miles away from Kentucky Power’s headquarters in Ashland.
One of the 55-year-old plant’s two concrete cooling towers needs to be replaced. While Kentucky Power has applied for a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to help pay for it, the company will seek to recover much of the cost from electricity customers.
Last month, the Kentucky commission approved Kentucky Power’s continued ownership of its half of Mitchell beyond 2028.
