In recent years, we have all seen a spike in costs.

Unfortunately, South River EMC is no different, we too have seen an increase in the cost of doing business.

As you might have read about, we have put the Equalizer in place, which is a temporary measure used to recover unexpected increases incurred by the Cooperative.

Compared to some other commonly tracked costs, electricity has risen the least.

In the past five years, electricity rates have risen 4.6 percent, a considerable amount less than the 6.1 percent you were seeing for gasoline, it is even more now.

Bread is 5.5 percent more and think how fast your family can eat it. But you washed clothes, dishes and yourself with water heated by electricity.

Helpful Tools

1SmartView: Visit your online account and enroll in SmartView. This enables you to view your daily energy use with the high/low temperatures for each day. It helps you to see how weather impacts your energy use. Consider enrolling in daily energy alerts. Make a list of what you do in a day, and if you are signed up for an online South River EMC account, check SmartView that day. Each day, it will update with the amount of kilowatt hours you have used.

2SmartEnergy Profile: Complete your SmartEnergy Profile for a detailed monthly energy-use report. When you think of all the activities you perform with electricity, from work, to food, laundry to entertainment and comfort, you can get a lot of bang for your buck.