Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.

 

7 April 2014

Another ragged rate rollout by Flathead Electric

Each spring, the Flathead Electric rural electric cooperative announces a rate increase — and does it in a way that I find absolutely infuriating. It tells a local newspaper, “Yep, rates are going up. We made that decision in February. Our customers will learn the new rates in June when they receive their bills for May.” And the newspaper dutifully sends the coop’s spin to the newspaper’s readers.

Here’s how Hungry Horse News editor Richard Hanners (a very good reporter) did it for the Daily InterLake on 5 April:

Flathead Electric Cooperative customers will see a small increase in their monthly electrical bills as the utility continues to incrementally adjust rates in response to higher wholesale power costs.

Flathead Electric’s board of trustees approved a 2.4 percent retail rate at their February meeting. Residential customers will see an average increase of $2.67 to their June 1 power bills, which includes power usage from May.

Nowhere in Hanners’ story do the new rates appear. Nor do they appear on FEC’s website.

This amounts to FEC’s taunting its customers:

Your electric rates are going up,
And yes, we know by just how much.
But rates are secret until June.
You like that not, who cares, so what:
Go bark, you dogs, howl at the moon,
To tell you now would be too soon.

Not publishing the new residential rates now serves no useful purpose. I suspect that business and industrial customers already know what the new rates will be, so it’s you and me and Joe and Jill down the street from whom that information is being withheld.

And, of course, once the new rates are published, the old rates disappear from FEC’s website, depriving customers of useful historical information. That’s why I maintain an Excel spreadsheet with the older residential rates. The table below displays FEC’s residential rates for 2009 through 2013. I believe the values are correct, but you should verify them independently for critical use.

Flathead Electric Cooperative
Residential Rate Class20092010201120122013
Base charge single phase16.0018.9120.7821.2622.13
0–n kWhrs/mth0.05700
0–600 kWhrs/mth0.050180.051250.053920.05714
601–3,500 kWhrs/mth0.060970.063040.066320.07028
3,501+ kWhrs/mth0.087190.092030.096830.10261

The base charge is in dollars per month. Electricity is dollars per kilowatt hour.