Empire Electric jacked up rates in May and I missed it!

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo- The Missouri Public Service Commission has approved a request filed by Empire District to change the fuel adjustment charge (FAC) on the monthly bills of its electric customers back in May 2018.

As a result of this filing, the FAC for a residential customer using 1,000 KwH (kilowatt hours) of electricity a month will increase by approximately $5.74 a month, from approximately $1.84 a month to approximately $7.58 a month. The change is expected to take effect on June 1.

The FAC change reflects Empire’s fuel and purchased power costs for the six month period of September 2017 through February 2018 (Case No. ER-2018-0270). It also reflects Empire’s FAC true-up filing (Case No. EO-2018-0271).

Empire District serves approximately 151,700 electric customers in the Missouri counties of Barry, Barton, Cedar, Christian, Dade, Dallas, Greene, Hickory, Jasper, Lawrence, McDonald, Newton, Polk, St. Clair, Stone and Taney. [Posted by KY3]

My thoughts: Just as in the convoluted and twisted tax structure we all live with, so does our utility companies have the ability to jack its customers up whenever the mood strikes them. Oh, and the money goes to the Canadian owners not to workers in the US. Yes, the taste of free money is intoxicating, isn't it? My opinion.

Massive power failure greets the New Year!

At around 9AM, Empire Electric lost power for a few hours. I remember the event well, because it was just 8 above zero when it happened. My initial calls to them them were meant with a dead line, but eventually I did get through to a 'robot' to log the problem. Swell, I thought! I tried to think warm thoughts as my place grew progressively colder and creaked like an old radiator that had stopped working. Fortunately, the problems lasted just a few hours.

Next, at around 10 AM, my cable (a lot of people's cable?) stopped working and once again I got a robotic message when I called, that the area was 'experiencing a high call volume'. I bet they were. That service continued to be out for the next 7 plus hours until, finally, by 6 o'clock, it was restored. I can only imagine what that was like for parents with kids who had nothing to watch on TV or do on the Net – must have been a fun situation.

Really Empire? I've got to wonder what exactly is the problem here? Is it outdated and or poorly maintained equipment? Perhaps it's poor upper management or maybe it's a combination sort of thing. A synergistic CF of the inept...?? It would be great if you would issue a public statement each time something like this happens....A reported 3000 customer were affected by this event!

And, so, we're off to begin a new year with two major services looking just a bit sad....

An aside: Were I to post what I really felt about this Canadian owned company, I'd be using words like crud, antiquated and anal retentive. I trust their ability to deliver consistent and reliable power to my personal adobe about as much as I could kick a box full of anvils. I've been with them for two decades and they perform well if the weather is complacent. However, come any sort of storm or really bad weather and they fold like a cheap tent in a high wind. And, I think they have the ability to sell this critical infrastructure off to another foreign interest... I wonder who that could be?

KRZK radio also posted a story! https://hometowndailynewsarchives.com/2018/01/01/over-1200-empire-electric-customers-without-power/

Like an old man, Empire Electric can't seem to keep it up!

Power outages, no matter how infrequent, have become more and more problematical in 2016 mainly due to everyone's great dependence on digital devices.. And so it was that on May the 15^th, 2016 at 9:58:22 AM a one second power loss wiped out everything I had done in the way of work on the computer that morning. Sure, I was able to recover a lot of it due to auto save, but that's not the point. The point is that having a power company keep the power up and running ALL THE TIME is a very important, some would say crucial, feature of their job description. Over the years, I've found that the Empire Electric COOP is not always up to that challenge.

Infrastructural blues!

With all the problems going on in America these days, it's a wonder how everything still works. Rural service providers in the area in which I live seem hard pressed, as of late, to keep it all together. Outages in the form of loss of power, cable TV and internet services have become increasingly common and raise some interesting questions.

Recently, the company that provides power to parts of southwest Missouri, Empire Electric, has suffered a series of outages that resulted when an entire substation went down for no apparent reason. Was it due to antiquated equipment I'm not sure. Calling such companies and talking to a real person is rare. Calling such companies and talking to an informed real person is rarer still!

Our local cable provider, Mediacom, also seems to have difficulty providing service on a consistent basis with outages occurring with increasing regularity. Both utilities seem especially hard pressed whenever an electrical storm passes through the area, which is often. I went through a day this week when communications were disrupted twice in one day and the power flickered during an electrical storm. That it stayed on was a minor surprise.

The point I'm making is that services, which I used to take for granted and which were provided with only rare disruptions, are now becoming increasingly sporadic and unsure. I can't help but wonder if this is the start of a trend in a country that has seen it's best days and which is now sliding towards darker days. A country that is broke and which will be increasingly unable to provide even the most basic of services to the population at large.