The cost of electricity will go up for Commerce — and all Georgia — utility customers in January.
City manager Clarence Bryant warned the Commerce City Council Monday night that federally mandated pollution control requirements will cause two coal-fired generating plants to be shut down for 86 days, forcing the city’s electrical supplier to buy electricity on the open market.
The result, said Bryant, is a “rather hefty” increase in electric rates.
“It’s going up for everybody. It’s going up for the (Georgia) power company,” Bryant said.
Just how much the rates will increase depends upon where each electric supplier gets its power, which for members of the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia ranges from a low of 2.8 percent to a high of 32.5 percent, Bryant explained.
Bryant estimated that half of MEAG’s 12-percent cost increase relates to the closures for the installation of scrubbers. The rest, he said, was due to seasonal factors that typically come into play in the fall.
Commerce’s cost will go up 11.7 percent. The percentage of increase to customers has not been determined, but it should be less than that.
“Coal-fired plants have to be taken out of service 86 days to be retrofitted with scrubbers,” Bryant explained. “Some plants are taken out of service every year for 20-30 days for maintenance. We have to go out on the market and buy replacement power. That’s where the bulk of this (increase) is coming from.”
Further hurting MEAG’s — and Commerce’s — finances is the fact that excess electricity they once could sell on the open market is not selling during the recession.
“We sell a good bit of our excess to the market. The economy doesn’t want it,” said Bryant, who indicated that the situation is costing MEAG “millions of dollars” and is contributing to the upcoming rate increase. “The economy doesn’t want any excess power from anybody.
