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Central IL | Our REA rates went up this past year after their long term contracts expired and their new contracts were significantly higher. They sent us a letter about 9 months prior to the rate increase to explain that the new coal fired generator they were invested in to replace some of these expiring contracts was over three years behind schedule because ofgovernmental environmental red tape. Therefore, the open market rates were a lot higher.
Concerning your question about a generator for a grain setup, I have no experience but I did consult with a friend on buying a generator for their house. His REA was offering a program that reduced your rates if they can turn off your electricity during peak demand times. They would sell you a propane generator to run your house during the outage. Using the 09 propane prices and the amount of propane used per hour we figured the cost to run the house by generator was about three times as expensive as the cost of the electricity on an hour by hour comparison and the comparison got worse under very light loads. We projected the rate savings would pay for about 40 hours of generator time. So our friend decided to chance the summer blackout periods would be less than 40 hours and he would also have the luxury of having electricity whenever there was weather related outages. | |
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Electricity
