Expensive Bills, Frequent Outages Plague Tennessee Electricity Users, Report Finds

The NES Music City Solar park, with more 17,000 solar panels, in Madison. Credit: Martin B. Cherry / Nashville Banner

Tennesseans pay more expensive electric bills and face more frequent and longer power outages than residents of other states, despite the presence of the Tennessee Valley Authority and other factors that contribute to relatively low energy costs in the state.

That's according to an analysis released Friday by Think Tennessee, a policy research organization, as the TVA continues to deliberate on a new multi-year plan called the Integrated Resource Plan or IRP.

The audience for Think Tennessee's reports is typically state and local lawmakers and other people intimately involved in policymaking. Still, the group's president, Erin Hafkenschiel, told the Banner she hopes this one reaches a wider audience.

"This is definitely a wonky technical document, which I realize is not normally what you produce for a general audience," she said. "But I would like to see papers in Tennessee covering the TVA work more generally, because I think not enough people are paying attention to it."

Think Tennessee reports that Tennessee enjoys the ninth-lowest average electricity prices, but that doesn't mean residents enjoy relatively cheap power bills. That's in part because Tennessee ranks among the five highest states in average monthly residential electricity consumption. The report notes that Tennessee ranks 45th nationally when it comes to savings from energy efficiency programs, the relative dearth of which contributes to the higher bills. Low-income Tennesseans spend 29 percent of their income on energy bills, and that mark surpasses 30 percent in 64 mostly rural Tennessee counties.

"Part of the reason is because the quality of our homes in more of the rural parts of the state are so bad that they are just leaking energy," Hafkenschiel said.

The TVA touts efficiency programs, including millions of dollars in grants to businesses and schools, but advocates worry it's not enough. The Think Tennessee report echoes findings released earlier this week by the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, which found that Tennessee lags far behind the national average when it comes to energy efficiency.

Also in the Think Tennessee report is a finding that the average duration and frequency of power outages in Tennessee increased dramatically in the past decade, and that nuclear power has quickly become the most significant source of energy produced in the state, surpassing coal. However, those figures do not account for energy purchased from elsewhere.

The TVA received more than 2,000 comments on its draft IRP, with clean energy advocates and others urging the federal utility that provides power to the region to focus more on efficiency programs and deemphasize natural gas as a source of energy. The TVA Regional Energy Resource Council is scheduled to receive an update on the draft IRP at a Jan. 31 public meeting.

Critics have highlighted the failure of gas plants that contributed to blackouts during a 2022 winter storm and the variable prices of gas as contributors to Tennesseans' high costs.

"For us, that general direction is using natural gas," TVA spokesperson Scott Brooks told the Banner in November.

Metro Nashville was among the thousands of individuals and entities that submitted comments about the planning document.

Kendra Abkowitz, senior director of sustainability and resilience in Nashville Mayor Freddie O'Connell's office, wrote a December letter to the TVA to urge the authority to focus on reducing demand, including expanding efficiency programs.

"There are opportunities for TVA to consider more aggressive carbon emissions reductions strategies or carbon emissions constrained scenarios within its IRP to prepare its energy system more fully for the predictable and unpredictable future," she wrote.