‘It ain’t right’: West Virginia residents protest another proposed rate hike from AEP

Advocates and residents gathered at the West Virginia Public Service Commission on Tuesday to speak out against another proposed electric rate hike from Appalachian Power and Wheeling Power Company.

The companies, both subsidiaries of American Electric Power, filed the rate increase request with the PSC in November. It could impact more than 460,000 electric customers in West Virginia.

If approved, residential customers using 1,000 kilowatt hours would see a nearly 14% increase — about $24 more — in their monthly bills. Commercial customers would be charged $57 more monthly and industrial customers would pay nearly $32,400 more a month, according to the PSC filings.

In addition to raising rates, the request also asks the PSC to decrease net metering credits that allow customers who install solar panels on their homes to sell the excess generated electricity back to the grid and lower their own utility costs. The proposal from AEP would mean a near-67% decrease in payment for that power, according to the nonprofit advocacy group West Virginians for Energy Freedom.

To date, 4,311 letters and online comments have been submitted to the PSC protesting the proposed rates. Not a single letter of support has been recorded, per the agency.

Shawn Phillips, with West Virginia Citizens Action Group, said representatives for AEP have attempted to write those comments and letters off as “bots” instead of accepting that real people are unhappy at their request.

“That’s them denying that the public doesn’t actually want this,” Phillips said. “It’s a denial that our collective organizing is effective and that people are upset.”

On Tuesday, about 40 people gathered outside the PSC building in downtown Charleston to voice their discontent with the proposed rate hikes. After the rally, several went inside the PSC, where they spoke to commissioners in a public hearing against the increase.

Stewart Acuff drove to Charleston from Jefferson County for the rally. He said he was frustrated with how AEP is operating, especially as electric users in the state have almost no other options for their power.

“Let me just tell you — when they are trying to cut the reimbursement for homeowners [with solar panels], they’re stealing from us,” Acuff said. “It’s just like coal colonialism all over again.”

Gary Zuckett, executive director of the West Virginia Citizens Action Group, said he remembers in 2009 when CAG lobbied successfully for net metering. The policy, he said, has been a game changer. With solar panels on his home, he pays the same electric bill every month and will for the next 20 years, he said.

Now Zuckett said he’s angry to see the policy threatened — especially as the company attempts to make electricity more expensive for all consumers.

“We need bills to be low for everybody, not just those who can afford to put solar on their homes,” Zuckett said. 

The new rate increase request comes after the PSC in September threw out a similar request from AEP due to the company submitting an incomplete filing. Back then, the company requested an 18% hike on electric users.

It also hits as the company reports record profits and as West Virginians pay more for power than residents in almost any other state. 

At the end of 2024, according to AEP, the company saw nearly $3 billion in profits for its shareholders.

According to a 2022 review of electric utilities across the country, West Virginians paid the third highest total household electricity costs as a percentage of their income. Alabama and Mississippi, according to the study from the consumer advocacy group Citizens Utility Board of Illinois, were the only states where prices outpaced that of the Mountain State.

West Virginia AEP customers have already undergone 14 rate increases from the company between 2017 and March 2023, according to the Charleston Gazette-Mail. In the last five years alone, according to Appalachian Power, residential rates for electricity have risen from $128.09 in March 2019 to $169.93 in June 2024. That’s a 32.6% increase in rates.

“It ain’t right for people to suffer when they get their electric bill. It ain’t right for people to have to decide what necessity to cut when they get their bill,” Acuff said. “This is unacceptable in all ways.”