Electric bills are going up as TVA raises rates
CEO of Tennessee Valley Authority Jeff Lyash speaks with panel discussing whether or not to sever ties with Memphis Light, Gas and Water at the Whitehaven Community Center. (The Daily Memphian file)
Energy costs continued to climb for Memphians last week when the Tennessee Valley Authority’s board of directors voted to raise electric rates by 5.25%.
The hike is expected to add about $4.38 to monthly power bills across the Tennessee Valley, including in Memphis. It also comes on the heels of a 12% rate hike from Memphis Light, Gas and Water throughout three years. The first 4% installment took effect in January.
The federal power agency provides most of the electricity in Tennessee and parts of six other states. The TVA transmission system delivers electricity to the city-owned MLGW, which then delivers that electricity to customers.
The 5.25% rate hike is to fund further investments in electricity generation, according to TVA. The agency cited demand growth, the growing need for electricity, as the reason for the rate hike.
“We recognize that people don’t pay rates, they pay bills. And that matters,” CEO Jeff Lyash said in a statement. “We know this is a kitchen-table issue for many families across our region. At TVA, we don’t like price increases any more than you do, and that’s why we continually work to reduce expenses by hundreds of millions of dollars each year.
“We have done everything possible to absorb costs as we invest in the reliability of our existing plants, construct new generation to keep up with growth and maximize solar to produce more carbon-free energy.”
Environmental groups panned TVA’s decision to raise rates and said the agency would only worsen climate change by building further fossil fuel-heavy electricity generation.
“While TVA leaders are attempting (to) downplay the impact of these rate hikes, the truth is that they will hurt families across the region who are already struggling just to keep the lights on,” Amanda Garcia, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, said in a statement. “The nation’s largest public power utility should be rapidly deploying clean energy options that can lower power bills, not rubber-stamping reckless rate increases.”
The group Appalachian Voices also weighed in and expressed concern about further natural-gas investments from TVA.
“With today’s action, the Tennessee Valley Authority Board of Directors made it even harder for its hard-working customers to make ends meet,” said Leah McCord, the Tennessee projects and coalition coordinator for Appalachian Voices. “TVA’s insistence on a multibillion-dollar methane gas expansion is almost certainly a driver of this increase and last year’s. The utility continues to ignore all the evidence that replacing coal with truly clean energy would cost less and create more long-term jobs in the valley.”
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Tennessee Valley Authority MLGW Jeff LyashSamuel Hardiman
Samuel Hardiman is an enterprise and investigative reporter who focuses on local government and politics. He began his journalism career at the Tulsa World in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he covered business and, later, K-12 education. Hardiman came to Memphis in 2018 to join the Memphis Business Journal, covering government and economic development. He then served as the Memphis Commercial Appeal’s city hall reporter and later joined The Daily Memphian in 2023. His current work focuses on Elon Musk’s xAI, regional energy needs and how Memphis and Shelby County government spend taxpayer dollars.
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