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Editor:
Our two-months Potomac Electric bill which came this week totaled $89.25, an increase of about 100 per cent in a year. Of this amount, the new bill notes that $17.58 is due to the automatic fuel cost increase permitted the electric utilities under revised regulations, and this automatic pass-on to the consumer is bound to increase sharply again under the President’s wondrous new program to let oil prices rise to still giddier heights. We have tried to cut down on our own use of electricity, as have so? many other users, but despite decreased usage the bills have been going up and up, with no end in sight.
Despite these soaring electric costs, the utilities keep demanding more and more rate increases. Rates of the 50 largest electric utilities rose 55.4 per cent in the first half of 1974, according to National Utility Service, Inc. Potomac Edison has been granted a succession of rate hikes while the Virginia Electric Power Company, was granted a $28 million rate increase last June and just two months later requested an additional “emergency” increase of $127.3 million and was granted $97.7 million, promptly announcing it would ask the State Corporation Commission for the
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