Small Businesses protest TVA power rates

CHATTANOOGA (WDEF) – The T-V-A board will meet on Thursday in Muscle Shoals, Alabama and it faces a well organized protest over a new rate proposal.

A Chattanooga group outlined their complaint at a press conference today in Chattanooga.

Director of the TN Small Business Alliance, Lenda Sherrell says “This rate structure change uh, is uh, we believe is going to have a negative impact on small business owners, not only in the Tennessee Small Business Alliance, but across the state of Tennessee, and indeed across the Tennessee Valley Region, which represents 7 states.”

Members of the Tennessee Small Business Alliance believe TVA has shifted 1.4 billion dollars onto smaller customers over the last 5 years.

TVA CFO John Thomas responds “They’ve looked at changes in costs for different groups of customers and assumed, if one goes down more than another that there has been cost shifting, and there really hasn’t. What they’ve misunderstood is the fact that TVA has reduced its overall costs 1.8 billion dollars over that time period”

Thomas says it’s more profitable to sell power to larger businesses.

“Large industry is actually cheaper to serve, because they do run continuously, three shift, seven day a week operations, and that’s actually cheaper for TVA to serve.”

But some small business owners think the power pricing structure is aimed at them.

Tap House, Brew Market Owner Chris Calhoun says “To hear that they’re going to incentivize a larger corporation and give them a better cut than what we feel like we should be a part of, it just hurts us.”

Lenda Sherrell “We strongly urge TVA leadership to go back to the drawing board and create a plan that helps small business throughout the Tennessee valley unleash our economic potential, and allows us to compete fairly with our big business counterparts.”