Thursday, October 2, 2008

When's it going to stop....soon I hope..

It's getting pretty had to know what to think these days. Prices on everything continue to rise but it seems harder to get the extra revenue to match it. When do you ever hear that the prices are going down??? I feel extremely bad for our seniors and others on fixed income as I'm afraid some of them may be taking it out of their savings. Pretty soon we're going to see a lot of small businesses that depend on fuel and electricity start to feel the pinch of these increases and they will probably have to lay people off or wind up operations. At some point raising electricity prices work against Maritime Electric as their consumers cut back or aren't operating anymore so in reality the hikes may defeat their purpose. Wouldn't it be nice if Maritime Electric asked their shareholder to take a pause on their expected financial returns until our economy starts to take a turn for the better...
Maritime Electric applies for rate increase
Thursday, October 2, 2008
CBC News
P.E.I.'s electric utility is looking for a rate increase of more than seven per cent for residential customers, and even more for business customers.
Under the application to the Island Regulatory and Appeals Commission, rates for commercial customers would go up 7.47 per cent, and 8.25 per cent for large industrial customers. The rate change would be effective for 2009.
"This has been a tough year for many of our customers," Maritime Electric CEO Fred O'Brien acknowledged in a news release Thursday.
"Customers' bills continue to be impacted as electricity costs are influenced by volatility in the market, increases in fossil fuels and increases in overall energy supply costs."
The requested increase is actually lower than had been expected. Maritime Electric buys 87 per cent of its energy from New Brunswick Power, and almost half of that is in short-term contracts tied to the price of oil.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yes I hope that "the little guy" finds a way to cope with the rising price of electricity and that nobody has to shut down a "mom and pop" business or that worse yet a big business - like Cavendish Farms - decides to pick up and move to somewhere with cheaper electricity - imagine all the families with 1 or even 2 unemployed workers then!

BUT I personally understood that a lot of our electricity is made over across in plants that run on heavy Bunker C oil.... so if the cost of oil goes up the cost of electricity goes up too, since it's "made out of oil".