Electric bills keep climbing, and for millions of Americans, it’s not just frustrating, it’s financially destabilizing. Whether you’re a working parent, a retiree on a fixed income, or a small business owner trying to keep the lights on, you’ve probably felt the squeeze. But what many people don’t realize is that the rising cost of electricity isn’t just about global fuel prices or supply and demand. It’s about how utility monopolies are allowed to operate and how the rules are rigged in their favor at your expense.
Across America, public officials allow utility monopolies to pass off the costs of mismanagement, speculative projects, and underutilized infrastructure onto everyday families and small businesses. These companies control the transmission and distribution of electricity from power plants into homes and businesses. While they cite the need for “modernization,” much of this cost surge has less to do with progress than with guaranteed profits. Public officials allow utilities to earn a fixed return on the money they spend to maintain the grid. That creates a perverse incentive: the more they spend—needed or not—the more they earn. And thanks to their monopoly status, ratepayers have no choice but to foot the bill.
Take PPL Electric Utilities, for example, which serves 1.5 million customers in central and eastern Pennsylvania. In a recent earnings report, they shared plans to increase spending next year to more than $1.8 billion on equipment like utility poles, powerlines, and transformers. That’s more than twice what they spent just a couple years ago in 2023. This outlay increases the value of their grid, locking in higher profits for parent company PPL Corporation and its shareholders for years to come with no assurance that the investments will improve service for customers.
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