You can thank Biden.

quit your whining. That's only a 22.2% increase. It's not true anyway. Biden Admin says inflation is only 8.2% so there's no way your power rate increased more than that because we know that Brandon and his administration are always truthful and has a firm grasp on all the economic numbers.

Lol, I hear you! You made my point. Let’s Go Brandon.

Any rate increase has to be approved by the Public Service Commission. The PSC is voted in by the rate payers.

The reason the power company needs to be a publicly regulated company that is allowed to make a profit is because of this:

1. There needs to be a sufficient amount of reserve power output capability.
2. Reserve capability means that when there are heat waves or freezing temperatures that could knock part of the generation capacity offline, there has to be a plant that is idling that can quickly come online to make up the difference.
3. Reserve power does not make a profit while it is just sitting there waiting for an emergency. (It would be like you having a spare truck in case yours breaks down.)
4. States where power companies are not regulated, and it's just a free for all with lots of different power utilities competing with each other struggling to make a dime, they don't have any reserve power. You know why? Because it's not profitable.
5. This is why states like California and Texas that don't have regulated power, can and frequently do have massive blackouts during things like forest fires, heat waves, snow and ice storms, a power plant goes down unexpectedly, etc...
6. The only time your power goes out in Alabama is when the power has been cut to your house or your neighborhood, by an ice storm or a tornado or a hurricane. Pretty rare, but when it does happen it is restored by the linemen pretty quickly all things considered.

I work for Alabama Power and I can tell you, they blow money like it’s going out of style. No reason for the increase. Trust me when I say this.

Truth spoken. My son works for them and the things he tells me about the money they PUSH him to spend is insane.

And they make millions in profit every year. They raise rates every time they can, drought conditions - oh we have to go up- too much rain - never hear them go back down. TVA sells power up north also. Wonder how much in campaign contributions they give out?

I work for the company too and I disagree.

There is going to waste and cost overruns in any extremely large company or organization. Look at companies like Amazon, TVA, GM, Ford, any governmental agency, etc... It's just the nature of the beast. However, speaking for myself and all the people that I know in the company, which is a lot, most of us work very hard to perform our jobs cost effectively and provide inexpensive and dependable power.

And yes there is reason for the increase. If you drove a delivery truck and the price of gas goes up, you have to charge more for deliveries. Simple as that.

Likely to be some very expensive coal ash remediation projects coming for them soon.

That has already been figured into to the budget.

There's already a bunch of them underway as we speak. Y'all can thank TVA and their disaster for those costs.