b
FRANKFORT — Republican Attorney General Russell Coleman is urging Kentucky’s utility regulator to deny Kentucky Power’s rate increase request, citing in part an outpouring of backlash in public meetings in Eastern Kentucky.
Kentucky Power, an investor-owned electric utility serving 162,000 customers across 20 Eastern Kentucky counties, asked the Kentucky Public Service Commission in August for a rate hike that would increase its annual revenues by 14.62%.
Kentucky Power President Cynthia Wiseman in written testimony said the rate increase was needed because the utility is struggling to get an adequate return on its investments. The utility is a subsidiary of American Electric Power, or AEP, based in Columbus, Ohio.
In a Feb. 3 brief filed to the commission, Coleman wrote that despite “AEP and Kentucky Power’s lamentations about not earning enough money, importantly, Kentucky Power does not lose money.”
“Kentucky Power reliably turns a profit for its parent AEP each year,” Coleman wrote. “AEP and Kentucky Power are not hurting, but Kentucky Power’s ratepayers are hurting.”
Coleman in his brief pointed to meetings held by the Public Service Commission to collect public comments on the rate increase request in Pikeville, Hazard and Ashland as evidence that “the relationship between Kentucky Power and its ratepayers is broken.” A number of Kentuckians spoke to the commission in those meetings opposing the rate increase request as unaffordable.
“If AEP believes the territory is not sufficient for it to achieve its profit goal, then perhaps it is time to let someone else provide the people of Eastern Kentucky with electric service,” Coleman wrote.
Coleman’s request comes after Kentucky Power proposed in January a settlement endorsed by twp industry groups, Kentucky Industrial Utility Customers and Kentucky Solar Energy Industries Association. The utility said the settlement would benefit ratepayers by cutting in half the rate increase in the first year, reducing the amount of revenue collected by $18 million. Coleman did not join that proposed settlement agreement.
Sarah Lynch, a Kentucky Power spokesperson, in an emailed statement said “many customers are facing real financial pressure and we take those concerns seriously.”
“That said, we are disappointed in what the Attorney General filed today given that it undermines a variety of customer programs and the settlement agreement that provide significant benefits to our customers and ultimately attempts to undercut the Company’s ability to provide safe and reliable service to our customers,” Lynch said.
Coleman’s brief noted that Kentucky Power has requested, and received, rate increases from the commission in past years. The commission in 2024 granted Kentucky Power a considerably smaller rate increase than what it requested.
