Clay Electric Co-op raising cost of power after price break

Members of the Clay Electric Cooperative will see their power costs go back up today.

The power supplier says members will see their cost of power for 1,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity increase to $109.  During the November and December months, the cost was lowered to $105.80.

Henry Barrow, director of member and public relations, says that the cost of power was cheaper all year long in 2012.

“But we looked and saw where we could give back some of that money because of the cost of it, and we were able to give a cost break in the cost of the power during the entire months of November and December back to our members,” Barrow says, reiterating that the Clay Electric Cooperative is a not-for-profit company.

Barrow says they now have to bring the cost back up because it’s a new budget year.

Clay Electric says the new $109 charge is still lower than their average cost for 1,000 kWh for 2012, which was $110.72.

“We have to recover a small margin on our sales,” Barrow says.  “We don’t sell it at dead cost.  We have to make a little bit on it, but those margins return back to the owners in capitol credits.  It goes into their account.”

Barrow says this year they returned $5.25 million to their members.

Clay Electric Cooperative maintains that they are the lowest in the state of all electrical cooperatives, and lower than almost all other utilities as well.  They say they are lower than JEA and others in Northeast Florida.

“We don’t believe in charging any more than we absolutely have to because our members own us,” Barrow says.

Clay Electric Co-op serves approximately 165,000 members in 14 counties.  It has six district offices: Keystone Heights, Orange Park, Lake City, Gainesville, Salt Springs and Palatka.