Along with climbing temperatures of the summer months come rising electric bills. But many residents may have noticed an unusually high spike on their recent energy bills. Vice President of Administration Services for the Cullman County Electric Cooperative Tim Culpepper is all too familiar with the grievances this has caused customers.

“If you’ve gotten your power bill, you’ve seen there’s been a big increase in your power. Right? I deal with people all the time, I took a cussin’ this morning about a power bill and that’s my job so that’s, OK. … But I wanted to explain one of the things that we’re trying to get out to folks is exactly what goes into that and you’re seeing such high power bills,” Culpepper said during Wednesday’s Cullman County mayors’ meeting.

The issue, as Culpepper explained it, is not within the CEC itself, but rather has trickled down from the Tennessee Valley Authority from whom the co-op purchased its power from. Normally an estimated 40% of the TVA’s power is derived from one of three nuclear power facilities — the second highest rate of nuclear power in the country — with natural gas making up the second highest percentage. This heavy reliance on nuclear energy typically results in lower costs to customers.

“Nuclear is the cheapest way to produce electricity. Once you build that plant, the fuel that you operate off that thing costs very, very little,” Culpepper said.

But when the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant in Tennessee was in need of routine maintenance that would require the facility to be shut down for 120 days, OSHA and TVA had to make a decision to close the facility during the winter months, or hope the predictions of a mild early summer would ring true.

The TVA chose the later, performing their largest nuclear refueling and maintenance outage in nearly a decade during a time that a sudden heat wave delivered seven of the hottest June days ever recorded.

Unable to simply reopen the facility, TVA was forced to purchase power from other systems to meet the demands being placed on its grid. However, the same demand was being placed on other energy providers, causing the rates of natural gas to triple at the time.

Culpepper estimated that these increased costs, coupled with an unusually hot summer, are causing customers to see on average about a $40 dollar increase per month to their normal power bill. He said that he estimates roughly $12 of that increase is from increased power use from customers.

While the Watts Bar nuclear plant was reopened last month, Culpepper said that customers may still be feeling the effects of its closing for several more months.

“So all those costs washed through and then just screwed it up in June. So, we got a lower power bill than we really should have in June, but they’re going to make it up over July and August. Then we have a really hot July so it gets pushed back even further. Long story short is, we’re going to have this constant adjustment hanging around for another two or three months probably,” Culpepper said.