For years we never had power outages here. Now we average about once a month. The only thing that has changed is that Duke Energy now runs things, and since then service has gone to crap.

Last year we had a major windstorm come through. Most of the area was without power for a week. With such a disaster, long repair times are to be expected. That isn’t the problem. Instead this is what’s starting to piss people off:

There are just some things you don’t take lying down. For 70-year-old Shirley Hayes, that’s paying for Duke Energy’s windstorm losses.

Hayes, a resident of Hunter, said she was furious when she heard Duke Energy proposed raising its rates to collect its $31 million in costs from the September windstorm. Worse was finding out the company planned to roll the cost into a proposal already before the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio to raise its electric distribution service.

“It really ticked me off. I lost about $2,000 worth of stuff, plus windstorm damage (during the windstorm),” she said.

The rate increase “just really upset me because I had to eat my loss, my neighbors had to eat their loss, but Duke is trying to make us all eat theirs,” Hayes said.

Mrs. Hayes has hit the nail on the head. Everyone took a big hit from that storm. Food was lost, people couldn’t work, damage occurred – the list goes on. But recouping costs seems to be limited to the big corporations, while Joe average just has to suffer.