Southwest Virginia is being asked to pay more for less, again.
On Monday, the State Corporation Commission will hear Appalachian Power’s request to raise rates. If approved, the average household would pay about $9 more a month starting in March, and that’s before a separate $3.99 charge the company is also requesting. The typical APCo bill already runs about $168 a month. Between 2007 and 2023, bills rose 137%, almost three times as fast as inflation, while bills for Dominion customers in the rest of the state went up 38%. For working Virginia families, that’s a lot of money on top of bills that are already too high.
Part of that increase is driven by APCo seeking larger profits. The utility wants a 10.5% return on equity, outpacing the 9.8% national average. Written testimony filed by Ralph Smith, a certified public accountant specializing in utility regulation, on behalf of Attorney General Jay Jones’ Division of Consumer Counsel, states that “if APCo’s return on equity were 9.325%, instead of the 10.5% that the company is asking for, APCo would only need $1.4 million, not $61.4 million, in additional revenue.” Additionally, SCC staff suggested that APCo’s base rate revenue should actually decrease by $5.5 million, making it clear that APCo is prioritizing its profits over its customers.
Two local delegates wrote to the commission that people are being forced to choose between paying the electric bill and buying groceries and medicine. Customers have filed comments with the SCC saying the same; one Lynchburg resident wrote that “electric bills are already at an all-time high.”
What makes this more infuriating is that while APCo is gouging their customers for more, it’s also slowing down something rural Virginia has been waiting on for a long time: reliable internet.
There’s federal money on the table right now to connect about 13,000 homes and businesses in Virginia that still don’t have access to broadband. These are families who can’t run a small business, help their kids with homework or see their doctor over video without the connection dropping.
In order to connect those 13,000 Virginians, internet providers need to attach cables to the utility poles that line our roads. The problem is that when a pole is outdated or out of code, APCo has been forcing providers to cover the lion’s share of replacement costs — even for pre-existing issues. The average replacement pole costs around $8,000, and according to one provider’s filing, APCo has been charging anywhere from 20% to 100% of that cost.
Federal regulators have already weighed in and ruled that practice unjustified. Earlier this year, the FCC ruled that providers only have to pay for what their own equipment adds — not the full cost of fixing a pole that was out of compliance to begin with. Providers say APCo kept charging anyway, and now the fight is back in front of the FCC. The federal money on the table comes with deadlines, and every month this drags on is another month people stay offline.
The SCC can’t fix the pole fight on its own, but it can send a message. A utility that wants more of our money should be doing more for us. That means denying the rate increase, following the commission’s own staff recommendations, and making clear that people are paying attention to how APCo treats the broadband projects our communities have been promised.
Rhena Hicks is the co-executive director of Freedom Virginia.
