Kentucky Power customers will pay $3 more each month for a new cooling tower at the Mitchell plant than West Virginia customers will pay.
In a filing with the West Virginia Public Service Commission, Wheeling Power and Appalachian Power say West Virginia electricity customers will pay $1.22 a month.
Kentucky Power says Kentucky electricity customers, though, will pay $4.69 a month.
Suzanne Barker Griffith, a retired teacher in Ashland, says that’s a burden for Kentucky Power customers on top of a proposed rate increase.
“So when I look at this and I see, well, we're going to be paying $3 more a month when we already have the highest energy burden in the state of Kentucky – this just makes it worse,” she said.
That’s in part because 460,000 West Virginia customers will be paying for the project, versus 160,000 Kentucky customers. Cost recovery is also calculated differently in each state.
Kentucky Power and Wheeling Power say in their respective filings that they’re splitting the $191 million total cost of the mechanical draft cooling tower, which is $95.5 million each.
It will replace a 55-year-old concrete cooling tower with structural deficiencies.
Kentucky Power has asked the Kentucky Public Service Commission for a 12% rate increase by 2027, with smaller increases this year and next made possible with tax deferrals.
The proposal has generated public outcry throughout Kentucky Power’s 20-county service territory. Residents and state and local officials expressed opposition at three hearings.
Griffith and other critics have noted that the Mitchell plant pays no Kentucky property taxes, employs no Kentucky workers and burns little Kentucky coal.
“We do not have the money to keep investing in a plant that's this old,” she said. “Something has to change.”
For its part, Kentucky Power has said the Mitchell plant is its least costly option to maintain its obligations to customers. It looked at other solutions, including market purchases and new natural gas generation, but they were more expensive.
The Kentucky PSC allowed Kentucky Power to continue its 50% ownership of Mitchell, south of Moundsville, West Virginia, beyond 2028.
That approval added $2.33 a month to the average residential electricity customer’s bill.
