Letter: Duke CEO ignores consumers, talks reliability

Last Friday, Duke Energy CEO Lynn Good said, “Almost 99.9 percent of our customers care about how much they pay for electricity and 99.9 percent also care about reliability.” She talked the reliability talk, but failed to walk the consumer walk.

The CEO achieved high marks for keeping Duke current with industry standards, planning for an aesthetically pleasing substation, and increasing the company’s bottom line. But, she failed to demonstrate concern for consumers.

Duke’s ill-conceived 15 percent rate increase proposes to recoup $332.5 million per year in previous coal pit expenditures when profits were skyrocketing. It asks consumers to pay another $129 million per year for future coal ash cleanups, while existing corporate funds are available. The proposal would increase the bill for the typical household by $18 per month.

A customer sensitive plan would drop the unjustified request to recoup the $332.5 million and ask shareholders to take a slightly lower dividend. Under such a proposal, there would be no rate increase, the corporate profit line would fall sightly and stockholder per-share dividend would drop from 86 cents to 81 cents.

Asking shareholders to take a nickel less per share makes more sense than having typical households pay $216 more per year!

Les Cochran, Weaverville