You knew this would happen, didn't you?
I told you Monday that Duke Energy - the electric monopoly covering the Cincinnati region - filed a request with regulators to make customers pay for the unprecedented September blackout. In other words, households would be paying more, despite losing service for days.
That's what corporatism - the ideology of modern American conservatism - means: paying more for less reliable services.
In my lifetime, Ohio has seemed even more likely than Kentucky to rubber-stamp utility companies' demands for rate increases. Ohio utilities are supposed to be regulated by PUCO - Puke-O, as I call it - but, like ODADAS, PUCO seems to be stacked with right-wing ideologues regardless of what party controls the governorship.
To the surprise of nobody (and the disgust of everybody), Puke-O has now granted Duke's demand. Ohio customers thus will be paying more for electricity - after losing service for an extended time frame, all because Duke took so long to restore power.
Like I said Monday, you can't make this stuff up.
Puke-O seemed eager to ram the rate increase through before anyone had time to notice, but you can complain about the situation here:
https://www.puc.state.oh.us/secure/PicForm/index.cfm
(Source: http://www.kypost.com/content/wcposhared/story/Duke-Customers-Footing-Bill-For-Windstorm/33sw0Z1lDE-OjJBK8eCQSw.cspx)
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Ohio lets utility make customers pay for blackout
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PSO, a division of AEP, an Ohio-based company, raised our rates because of the ice storm in December 2007 that crippled the region and caused me to lose power for 6 days. Some were without power for longer. Everything in my refrigerator and freezer was ru. Let the company's shareholders absorb the cost. It's not like they're not making gobs of money anyway.
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