Kentucky Leads In Low Rates

Kentuckians pay the lowest electric rates in the nation
according to the latest figures from the U.S. Energy Department.

Estimates for the first three months of this
year put Kentucky’s average residential rate at 5.2 cents a kilowatt-hour. Idaho
has the next lowest rate at 5.3 cents. The average for the whole United States
is 7.96 cents a kilowatt-hour.

Those are residential rates. Kentucky also has
the lowest rates if you average all classes of rates-residential, commercial,
and industrial.

Experts have been predicting for months that
as a result of the California electricity crisis, rates in the West would rise,
making Kentucky’s rates the lowest. These latest numbers seem to bear that out.

For years Kentucky’s rates have been among the
lowest in the nation for several reasons, especially its reliance on low-cost,
local coal fields for nearly all its power. The only cheaper rates have been in
the Pacific Northwest, where an abundance of hydroelectric dams made that part
of the country the low-rate leader.

But as California struggled with energy supply
and demand during the past year, rates rose throughout the region, while rates
in Kentucky remained relatively stable.

A more detailed version of this report can be
found on the Internet Web site of the Kentucky Association of Electric Cooperatives
at www.kaec.org/info/lowestrates.htm.

New Economy conference

“The Morphing of Main Street, USA,” a summit
on the future of America’s heartland cities, will be held at the Norton Center
for the Arts at Centre College in Danville September 24-26. For more information
on the conference, sponsored by New Cities Foundation and Centre College, call
(800) 876-4552 or e-mail robyn@klc.uky.edu.

HGTV features Frankfort

The flowers and gardens around Kentucky’s state
Capitol, governor’s mansion, and the 37-foot floral clock will be the subject
of a new cable TV series on Home and Garden Television, better known as HGTV.
A crew was in Frankfort in June to tape one of 26 episodes that will air on
Great American Gardens this fall.

What attracted HGTV to Frankfort was the 100-ton
floral clock. Part of the uniqueness of the clock is that, unlike other floral
clocks, it is perched on a stone pedestal above a fountain rather than built
into a hillside.

The program will also feature the gardens
on an expansive boulevard strip that leads up to the Capitol building, the landscaping
in front of the governor’s mansion, and large fabricated hanging baskets teeming
with begonias for the summer.

Co-op scholarship winners

Kentucky Women in Rural Electrification (WIRE)
has chosen three winners to receive $750 scholarships for 2001-2002. They are:
Rebecca K. Vincent of Leitchfield, a member of Warren Rural Electric Cooperative
based in Bowling Green; Candace Nicole Cupp of Manchester, a member of Jackson
Energy Cooperative based in McKee; and Meredith R. Frye of Somerset, a member
of South Kentucky Rural Electric Cooperative based in Somerset.