Saturday, January 16, 2016

Curious thing: When something happens to the Lake Worth Electric Utility it's news but when something doesn't happen it's not

[Oooops. Note that Jack Borsch is the Director of Lake Worth's Electric Utility and Walt Gill is the Assistant Director. I corrected that error in the post below (note the comment below). And Congratulations! all of you at the Electric Utility for doing such a great job.]

Yesterday (1/15) terrible storms rolled through the Lake Worth Electric Utility service area and what many people expected to happen didn't happen. There were no widespread outages. There may have been a few small ones and you can comment below on your experience if there was an outage.

However, FPL had some outages you can read about here.

The City of Lake Worth now has a "Power Tracker" to monitor outages and Walt Gill, the City's Utility ASSISTANT Director penned a newsletter about this very subject.

If you've been paying attention the biggest concern for many who depend on Lake Worth for their electricity is the possibility of a future spike in electric rates:
Lake Worth commissioners Ryan Maier and Chris McVoy made a failed pitch to raise the City's electric rates.
Many neighborhoods in the City have Florida Public Utility natural gas line access and if you have the resources you can switch out your electric appliances to gas and save a ton of money. Any future spike in electric rates will be blunted due to less dependence on electricity like an electric dryer or stove. The other benefit of having natural gas is you can still cook if the electric service is disrupted.

Note that Mayor Pam Triolo, Vice Mayor Scott Maxwell, and Commissioner Andy Amoroso have worked hard to bring electric rates down and try to achieve parity with the rates that FPL charges. It might behoove you to pay attention: If the current majority on the City Commission is flipped you could very well end up paying a very high price when you get a future electric bill in the mail.