Bills Show Rate Changes from Biomass Incinerator

- by Christo­pher Cur­ry, Octo­ber 30, 2013, Source: The Gainesville Sun

The Octo­ber bills for elec­tric cus­tomers of Gainesville Region­al Util­i­ties show the first of two rate increas­es sched­uled for this bud­get year with the bio­mass plant com­ing online.

Bills sent out this month to res­i­den­tial cus­tomers show high­er rates than in August and Sep­tem­ber. Still, they are below the rates in place for 10 of the 12 months of the bud­get year that end­ed on Sept. 30.

The more sig­nif­i­cant increase will come in Decem­ber, the month the bio­mass plant is sched­uled to go into full com­mer­cial operation.

For a res­i­den­tial cus­tomer using 1,000 kilo­watt-hours a month, the Octo­ber bill is $124.15. That is an increase from the $115.67 bill for that usage lev­el in August and Sep­tem­ber. But it is below the $127.67 bill that a res­i­den­tial cus­tomer using 1,000 kwh a month would have had from Octo­ber 2012 through July 2013.

In Decem­ber, when this bud­get year’s full rate increase from the bio­mass plant kicks in, the bill for 1,000 kwh usage will rise to $141.15.

One thou­sand kilo­watt-hours’ usage is com­mon­ly used as the mea­sur­ing stick in com­par­ing elec­tric rates. It is above the aver­age GRU res­i­den­tial usage, a result attrib­uted to con­ser­va­tion and the large num­ber of apart­ments in this col­lege town, but close to the aver­age usage for a sin­gle-fam­i­ly home in the GRU ser­vice area.

As a point of com­par­i­son, the low­er GRU rates in place dur­ing August and Sep­tem­ber moved the util­i­ty’s bills for 1,000 kwh usage from one of the high­est in the state to the 11th-low­est among the 33 munic­i­pal util­i­ties in Flori­da, accord­ing to the month­ly report from the Flori­da Munic­i­pal Elec­tric Association.