Lafayette County Electric Bills Spike After January Ice Storm, Utilities Explain

Electric bills arriving in Oxford and Lafayette County mailboxes carried an unwelcome surprise for many customers of North East Mississippi Electric Power Association: charges that reflected nearly two months of electricity use, a byproduct of how the late-January ice storm scrambled the cooperative's billing cycles.

Keith Hayward, CEO and General Manager of the cooperative, stepped in front of the camera to address a flood of questions that had been circulating on Facebook, explaining the mechanics behind bills that left some customers struggling to cover the full amount at once.

The storm knocked out power across Oxford and Lafayette County beginning Jan. 24. While meters sat unreadable during the outage, billing cycles stalled. Once power returned and meter readings resumed, the cooperative placed those delayed cycles back into the normal billing sequence, which pushed two months of accumulated charges onto a single bill for some customers.

That overlap was already straining household budgets before any billing confusion entered the picture. The two weeks leading up to the outage were brutally cold: between Jan. 10 and Jan. 21, all but two days were below freezing, driving up heating loads before a single outage occurred. Because the cooperative runs six different billing cycles each month, the exact meter-reading date for each customer determined how much of that cold-weather consumption landed on their bill. "Depending on when your cycle of your billing is, what captured those 11 days could greatly affect your bill," Hayward said.

That same cold-weather context also shaped the cooperative's response to customers who questioned why they received no credit for days without power. The high usage logged in early January, before outages began Jan. 24, accounted for much of the elevated charges even without the billing-cycle delay factored in.

A separate point of confusion surfaced in customers' online accounts, which appeared to show electricity usage continuing through the outage. Hayward attributed that to how the cooperative's systems display information, not to actual consumption being recorded during the blackout.

Customers who cannot pay the full balance immediately can contact North East Mississippi Electric Power Association to arrange a payment plan, which may extend up to about 90 days. Cooperative staff can also connect customers with local community assistance programs for additional relief.