I just received my monthly bill from Riviera Utilities, and it's the highest it's EVER been! Now I know we've had some really cold snaps in the last couple of months but this is ridiculous. This billing period was from December 26th through January 28th, and according to Riviera's little graph they politely include at the bottom of each bill, my usage this month compared to the same period last year was up 37%.

I live in a tiny house, all electric, and am very conservative with my energy usage. If my bill is $200, how in the world can a family with a medium-sized - or large! - house afford to heat it?!

Have others experienced this seemingly unexplainable increase in their rates? What about Alabama Power customers? Or has it just been a lot colder since the end of December than I remember?

-nab

I am an Alabama Customer. Living in a house by myself, when I am never home. My December Power Bill was $199.04. I called them immediatly. Because, i did not use my heater ONCE in december. For those of you that live in the area. You remember the hot spells we had. Well, the nice lady with Alabama Power told me that infact, it was December and it was very cold, therefor the reason my bill was so high was because my usage of the heater. Which, I did not use. They checked my meeter (sp??) and everything was normal. I reminded her of how hot it was this december and she, kindly reminded me again, that it was winter and it does not get hot in the winter time.

I dont know what to do.

Alabama Power is ridiculous too, I live in a one bedroom apartment and my bill averages 125.00 a month,
(2 years ago it averaged 35.00 a month) Im a cold preferenced person and have not even turned on my heater this winter, so the excuse of expensive winter electric is nonsense,. When I did call and complain, she told me that I probably ran the dishwasher to much??? I guess washing dishes when the washer is full, abt every other day is to much. Jeesh...
I dread this summer coming, not only for the actual heat, but the power bills that are going to be outrageous, I dont know how they expect people to be able to continue to afford this. And I worry about the elderly who are barely making it now. They cannot tolerate heat well for the most part and it could be life or death for them.
Greed is a evil thing, you cant convince me that Alabama, Gulf or any of the other power companies are in such a situation that they have to charge so much.

I agree, my bill is over $400.00, $78.00 of which is "Power adjustment cost". Starting March 1, 2008, Baldwin EMC is requiring anyone who has been late or shut off in the past 12 months to pay an additional "deposit" of over $300.00. That is why I posted "It not right utilities in our community" in the Community Discussion. I will struggle to pay my outrageous bill, but what is going to happen those who simply can't? I hope our favorite news station will do a story on our concerns, so that there could may be an investigation on the utility gouging. good luck to all.

The "Power Adjustment Cost" is just a milder way of saying "Fuel Adjustment Costs". They're passing fuel cost along to their customers. This seems kind of odd to me since most of the power generated in this area is produced by coal, as if somehow coal and gasoline are tied together. I know it takes fuel to mine coal, but if you notice, these adjustments happen in tune with gasoline prices. The coal is usually bought far ahead of usage, so is this some kind of retroactive increase?

Many years ago (over 20) we had the same problem here. Power bills that were high one month and low the next. The first thing we did was get onto levelized (SP?) billing. The power company averages out your bill based on previous years usage.

While this helped, every once in a while we would get higher than expected bills. Looking into it we discovered that the meter wasn't always being read. Sometimes it would be two or three months before the meter was actually read. They would guess at our usage. We complained about it of course and while the situation is better it still happens every once in a while.

As a side note, the gas and water companies do the same thing: Not read your meter each and every month.

So... Add another monthly task to your to-do list and jot down those numbers and check them against what the utility says they are.

Oh... A couple of months ago we changed the overhead lights in two rooms from incandescent to those little curly fluorescent lights. Knocked our power usage down by about 6 bucks. While I don't like the fact that they take a few minutes to reach their full output, they have to warm up, I was suitably impressed to make plans to change a few more lights around the house.

Unfortunately for me, Riviera Utilities does not offer "averaged billing", which I believe is the same thing as levelized. That would be a big help if they did as my summer bills are much lower. Furthermore, Riviera no longer has meter readers (at least in my area). The meters are electronic and feed the usage directly to them with no human contact at all. It's just like a great big computer that sucks money out of your pockets directly into the pockets of Riviera Utilities.

I'm tellin' you, we can't win.

-nab

My Riviera Utilities bill last july was $340.00 and I was working at the time. Now I am unemployeed so I dread this upcoming summer. I use gas heat but that still did not stop my January bill from going up over $100.00 from December. I have gone to all the new light bulbs, re-structured the door facings, two new windows installed but to no avail: still high energy bill - even install new wind turbons(?) on my roof. Can someone suggest anymore I can do without going thru the summer with no air-conditioning or the winter with no heat. To make matters worse I live in downtown Fairhope and have to pay Riviera Utilites.