September 13, 2007
LC Power Taking 2007 Rate Plan to Public Hearing

By Dave Maxwell

Lincoln County Power will present their proposed rate hike for the next year to members of the public on September 24 at the Lincoln County Courthouse in Pioche at 6 pm,.

Dave Luttrell, project manager with LC power, said that “Up until now we have been developing proposed rates internally at the staff level and reviewing what our future revenue requirements will be. Now we will make a public presentation of what we see as our rates going forward the next several years and we will be asking for public input back.”

After receiving public input, LC Power will then decide how much, if any, of a rate change to make. That rate change will be announced at a future meeting in October.

Luttrell said he thought the increase would be, “roughly be around 9.4 percent overall for the Lincoln County Power District. Some classes will see a little bit more and some a little bit less, but everybody will see somewhere around the 8-10 percent range increase in their overall rates.”

The 9.4 percent rate is a little higher than had been reported to the Board in July, but less than what they first started with as a rate a few months ago. At one time it had been about 8.1 percent and Luttrell said that over the summer they have “gone back and forth a little bit as we have fine tuned our rate design and our revenue requirements.”

“At 9.4 percent,” he added, “we are fully insulated against what might happen at Coyote Springs. If we get revenue starting to come in from Coyote in the next couple of years we can then decide to apply that to future revenues or lower rates.” In the unlikely event, that Coyote Springs did not happen and could not provide revenue to LC power, the 9.4 percent would still cover that kind of loss.