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Insights > February Ushers in Lower Rates for Entergy Mississippi Customers
February Ushers in Lower Rates for Entergy Mississippi Customers
02/03/2016
Please allow me to share with you some good news about your power bill. While your own electricity usage is still the biggest driver in your bill, the rates that are set for the cost of that power are very important as well. Entergy Mississippi, Inc. recently announced its third rate reduction in 2015. With this latest reduction, our rates are now more than 22% below the national average – giving our customers some of the lowest electricity rates in the country (see chart).
Over the last few months, a typical Entergy Mississippi residential customer using 1,000 kilowatt hours per month would have seen their monthly electric bill drop to less than $100. Our residential bills today are more than $10 per month less than they were at the beginning of 2015, and pending Mississippi Public Service Commission approval, Entergy Mississippi customers will see another $6.80 rate decrease early next year – dropping the same customer bill to just over $93.
While electricity rates rise and fall year-to-year based on many factors, it is important to note that our average residential price today is now comparable to what it was in 2005. On the other hand, the national average residential price for power, on the other hand, is now 37% higher than it was in 2005.
Entergy Mississippi’s low rates are good for the pocketbooks of our customers…but that’s not all. Lower electricity rates move more disposable income into other parts of our local economies and also help our state attract large employers to Mississippi.
These low rates, however, are not just happenstance. A lot of hard work by the men and women of Entergy Mississippi go in to keeping your power safe, reliable and affordable. Entergy Mississippi has taken crucial steps to keep its rates low, such as:
• Acquiring more highly efficient, low-cost natural gas power plants;
• Upgrading the Grand Gulf Nuclear Station to get 13% more low-cost nuclear power from the same plant;
• Pooling together with other utilities to get more efficiently dispatched power from multiple sources around the country in a competitive market (saving our customers $48 million last year alone); and,
• Streamlining our organization to make our operations more cost efficient for the long term.
But the people of Entergy Mississippi have not done these things alone. These achievements and their resulting low rates would not have been possible without the work of others, too, such as the Mississippi Public Service Commission, the Mississippi Public Utilities Staff, the Governor and the Mississippi Legislature. Creating a regulatory environment supported by sound public policy where healthy utilities can produce affordable power for homes and businesses truly takes teamwork.
While our team is proud of our record, we are not content with the status quo. To keep power bills affordable in the future, Entergy Mississippi is now investing in new types of technologies and planning new infrastructure that could help us usher in a new era of power delivery for our customers – improving reliability and giving customers more control over their energy use than ever before.
While future compliance and generation costs will always be an uncertainty in our business, please know that the men and women of Entergy Mississippi are working every day to prepare for whatever may come so we can continue to deliver you safe, reliable and affordable power for years to come.
Haley R. Fisackerly
President and CEO
