Though more people have signed up for the Glasgow Electric Plant Board’s latest optional rate than the last one, reaction to the rate has been negative, with EPB customers and Attorney General Andy Beshear arguing the rate doesn’t offer much, if any, relief for people struggling to pay their electric bills under the utility’s controversial “coincident peak” rate structure.

Though she suspects she’s in the minority, Karla Norman, a founding member of Glasgow Citizens Against the EPB Rate Structure, said she’ll be opting into the new rate.

“The reason I’m switching is because I hate the coincident peak and refuse to worry about it,” she said.

When the EPB made an optional rate available only for the month of September, Norman switched because it greatly reduced the rate for onpeak electricity.

The September rate, which charged 15.521 cents per kilowatt hour during onpeak hours on weekdays, except for federal holidays, and 4.838 cents during offpeak hours, is better than the current optional rate, Norman said.

The optional rate the EPB passed at a Sept. 27 meeting, which was one of three rates EPB superintendent Billy Ray unveiled, does away with peak hours, charging a flat rate of 8.439 cents per kWh in the summer and 7.971 cents per kWh in the winter and a monthly customer charge of $24.30.

Norman said the new rate will cost her more than the September rate, adding that she considers the customer charge to be far too high.

“I’m not wealthy or anything but I can afford an extra $20 or $40 to not have to deal with that peak hour,” she said. “I’m tired of the EPB controlling my lifestyle.”

At the Sept. 27 EPB board meeting, Rebecca Goodman, with the Attorney General’s Office of Rate Intervention, read out loud a letter from Beshear’s office expressing disapproval of the new rate.

“The proposed rate designs have significant shortfalls, not the least of which is that none of them provide rate relief to many of the folks most affected,” the letter said.

Sheila Hogue, EPB’s marketing manager, said roughly 45 people signed up for the new rate on Tuesday, the first day it became available.

Hogue wasn’t sure how this compares to what EPB was expecting.

Superintendent Ray was unavailable for comment.

Sherri Myers, another founding member of Glasgow Citizens and write-in candidate for Glasgow City Council, decided not to go with the new rate because it will cost more than the peak coincident rate structure.

“You still need to conserve as much as you were,” she said.

Marna Kirkpatrick, who is running for a Glasgow City Council seat, spoke to the Daily News via Facebook messages, saying that she is against the optional rate because people won’t save money with it.

She’s spoken to many seniors who find the rate confusing and advised them not to accept the new rate, she said.

“I told them to wait this out and hopefully the AG will get something solved with Billy Ray to where everyone meets in the middle,” she said.

The biggest faults she finds in the rate are the price and the fact that anyone signing up for it is locked into the rate for a full year, Kirkpatrick said.

“If the AG went over all 3 options and suggested that they were all unacceptable that should tell us enough right there,” she said.

— Follow Daily News reporter Jackson French on Twitter @Jackson_French or visit bgdailynews.com.