MYRTLE BEACH, SC (WBTW) – Santee cooper customers can expect to see a slight increase in their bill beginning April 1.
Santee Cooper executives say the rate increase was stretched out over a two-year period to try and reduce the impact on the customers. The first increase came in 2016 at a 6.7% hit to customers’ monthly bill.
Santee Cooper spokesperson Susan Mungo says the rate hike in 2016 went toward the fixed costs associated with serving the customer, things like power lines and house meters.
The second increase will hit monthly electricity bills at a rate of 2.2%. This part of the two-year plan is to cover expenses related to environmental rules, a nuclear expansion, and slower than expected growth, justifies Mungo.
Mungo says the utility company is working to shift its budget and procedures to avoid another rate increase for customers.
“Debt restructuring. We’re always looking at that whenever interest rates apply, and we are also trying to look at expenses, our budgets,” explains Mungo. “We look at our budgets every year and cut wherever possible to reduce that impact and therefore the impact on the need for a rate increase.”
Although customers will see a smaller increase in April as compared to 2016, one Santee Cooper consumer says the current rates make it nearly impossible for young people, like his children, to start a life of their own.
“If they keep hiking up the rates for electricity and any other thing, well, they (the next generation) may not have the means to pay for this,” argues Santee Cooper customer Calvin Miles, Sr. “I mean, the way the economy is now, they may just end up moving back home. And that’s what we try to do, we try to prepare them to make it on the outside, instead of making that U-turn to go out and establish yourself only to come back home.”
Prior to the 6.7% increase in 2016, Santee Cooper’s most recent price increase was just three years prior in 2013. The utility company says it is looking at budget cuts and restructuring debt to avoid having to constantly raise the rates.