A new report finds 268,000 utility disconnections in a single year as residential electricity rates have risen 128% since 2001. Hundreds of Kentuckians say their winter bills are the highest they’ve ever seen. LEXINGTON, Ky. — When Hali Jane Rossi opened her Kentucky Utilities bill last month , she sobbed. A single mother who had just relocated to Kentucky for its lower cost of living, she was staring at a charge of nearly $600 — roughly triple what she’d expected. “I called and they suggested I have my appliances looked over,” Rossi said. “My property manager said the homeowners are refusing to pay for that and blamed the weather.” She is not alone. When this newsroom put out a call on social media asking Central Kentucky residents whether they had experienced unusually high utility bills this winter, the response was immediate and overwhelming. Hundreds of people replied within days, many posting screenshots of their bills and sharing stories of shock, anger and financial distress. Their accounts paint a picture of a region in the grip of an affordability crisis that extends far beyond one cold snap. The complaints are now backed by hard data. A February report from the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center, the Energy Equity Project at the University of Michigan, and the Energy and Policy Institute found that Kentucky’s electric utilities carried out more than 268,000 service disconnections in the most recent fiscal year — an 87% increase over the prior year. Residential electricity rates in the state have risen 128% since 2001. And the federal safety-net program designed to keep low-income families connected to power covers less than half of what is actually needed. ‘My bill was the same as my rent’ The stories that poured in from readers followed a pattern: longtime residents in homes they know well, living the same way they always have, opening bills two or three times higher than anything they had previously seen. Hunter Townsend, who has lived in the same two-bedroom duplex for six years, shared a month-by-month breakdown. His bill was $82 in November, climbed to $268 in December, hit $388 in January and arrived at $352 in February. “It is the highest that it has ever been in that timeframe,” he wrote. His neighbor in the adjoining unit, he noted, experienced the same trajectory. Alan Walters reported a $792 KU bill for his 2,700-square-foot house, even after having his crawlspace insulated in the fall. Amanda Todd watched her bill escalate from roughly $200 in November to $557 in January and $888 in February for a 2,000-square-foot home. Nicole Escobar Martinez put it bluntly: “My electric bill is same as my rent.” Apartment dwellers were not spared. Cara Mia Colt reported a $480 bill for a 700-square-foot apartment with the thermostat set to 65. Stefani Joi Heller, living in a small one-bedroom, said her bill jumped from $40 in November to $122 in January with the thermostat held at 62. Heather L. Puckett, a four-year tenant in the same apartment, said her bill tripled to $400. “Ridiculous,” she wrote. “I’ve lived in the same apartment 4 years and never had it been this high.” Several respondents said their bills defied easy explanation. Devyn Kellione reported a bill of almost $600 despite having the meter pulled and using no electricity for eight of the days in the billing cycle. Therese Dialls said she received a $300 bill for an apartment she hadn’t stayed in for two months. Danielle Jarboe said she kept her home cooler than in previous years and still saw her bill double compared to the last five Januarys. Some residents reported bills that would strain any household budget. Char Liese Lewis reported $677. Nathan Hoskins — a public school teacher — received a $755 bill, which he said amounted to nearly half his paycheck. Mykala Collins posted a single figure: $1,063. Sarah Popkhadze Mohammed, who has lived in her home for a decade with the heat set at 68, said her bill went from its usual $140 to $500 last month and $800 this month. The frustration extended beyond KU customers. Multiple respondents flagged Columbia Gas of Kentucky, with one resident reporting a jump from $50 to $330. Another, who identified herself only by her first name, wrote that her Clark Energy bill doubled from December to January and doubled again in February. When she asked the utility about it, a representative acknowledged recent fee increases but couldn’t explain the full magnitude of the jump. This newsroom also received emails from residents who did not want to comment publicly. One described a $590 KU bill with only 10% more usage than the same month the year before, when the bill had been $250. Another wrote about a $650 bill on a newly remodeled home where the biggest previous bill had been $288. “Being first time homeowners, and being young starting out, we were unsure of what to expect,” the couple wrote. A Kenwick neighborhood resident, Emma Moore, said she had reached out to four law firms about a potential class-action lawsuit against LGE and KU, arguing that price gouging during a declared state of emergency is illegal. What the data shows The anecdotal accounts are consistent with a broader, data-driven picture laid out in “Lights Out in Kentucky: Energy Burdens and Electricity Disconnections Across the State,” released this month by the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center, the Energy Equity Project, and the Energy and Policy Institute. The report examined disconnection data from 23 electric utilities regulated by the Kentucky Public Service Commission, covering 1.74 million households. Its central findings are stark. In fiscal year 2025, which ran from July 2024 through June 2025, those utilities disconnected customers 268,885 times — an 87% increase over the previous fiscal year. The increase was driven overwhelmingly by Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities, which together serve about 1.3 million gas and electric customers and accounted for 77% of all disconnections. LGE’s disconnections alone surged by 285% between fiscal years 2024 and 2025 — a jump the report’s authors called “somewhat surprising” given that there had been no rate increase during the period and the increase occurred in every month, not just those with extreme temperatures. “It was just kind of shocking to see how much of an increase there was, and in particular that LGE, KU was driving a lot of that,” said Rebecca Shelton, the director of policy at the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center and one of the report’s lead authors. “Once you’re disconnected, that’s where the hardship starts.” Kentucky’s weighted average energy burden — the share of household income spent on electricity and home fuels — sits at 5.8%, just under the 6% threshold that researchers consider affordable. But that average masks enormous variation. Nearly half the state’s census tracts exceed the 6% threshold. Over one in five Kentucky housing units have energy bills that qualify as unaffordable. And for households below 150% of the federal poverty level, energy burdens range from 13.6% to 21.8% of income, depending on the utility. The geographic distribution of that burden is concentrated in two areas that might seem to have little in common: the Louisville metropolitan area and Eastern Kentucky. Five of the 10 most heavily burdened census tracts are in Jefferson County; the other five are scattered across the Appalachian counties of Pike, Perry, Knox and Bell. “When it comes to utility affordability, one of the most urban areas of the state and one of the most rural areas of the state have a lot in common,” Shelton said. Who gets disconnected — and who doesn’t One of the report’s most striking findings is that high energy burdens do not automatically translate into high disconnection rates. The relationship between what customers owe and whether they lose power turns out to hinge heavily on utility-level policies. Kentucky Power Company, which serves a large swath of Eastern Kentucky and has the highest average energy burden in the state at 9.6%, had the lowest disconnection rate of any utility studied: just 0.23% of customers per month. That rate actually declined over the three-year study period, even as KPC implemented a rate increase in January 2024 and customers dealt with an unusually cold winter in early 2025. What KPC does have, the report noted, is a set of protective policies that exceed the state’s minimum requirements. The utility limits disconnections to weekday business hours, prohibits them when temperatures are forecast to reach 32 degrees or below, gives customers 21 days to pay rather than 15, and operates its own residential energy assistance program funded by a charge on all customer bills with a two-to-one shareholder match. By contrast, LGE, which has the lowest average energy burden among all utilities studied at 4.7%, had the highest disconnection rate. The report’s authors pointed to two potential factors: a dramatic drop in federal LIHEAP assistance to LGE customers in fiscal year 2025 and the utility’s rollout of smart meters, which allow remote disconnection without sending a worker to the home. “I’m not saying that that is why there are more disconnections, but it is certainly easier to disconnect and reconnect people when you don’t have to drive out to their house,” Shelton said of the smart meters. “There haven’t been any studies on that, but I think it’s definitely something to explore.” Drew Gardner, an LGE and KU spokesperson, said in a statement that the number of disconnections varies year to year and that the utility’s smart meters can actually reduce the duration of service loss since there is no need to dispatch a worker for reconnection. He said the utility had eliminated its reconnection fee for customers reconnected remotely. The report also found that utilities routinely disconnect customers who owe remarkably small amounts. The majority of utilities had made disconnections when a customer owed less than $100, and one cooperative, Nolin RECC, had disconnected customers who owed less than $25. Shelton called it “shocking” to see how little debt could trigger a cutoff. Reconnection fees compound the problem. Most utilities charge them, and they can range from $30 to nearly $400. South Kentucky RECC charges $387 for an after-hours reconnection, compared to $47.76 during business hours. A safety net with holes The federal Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, known as LIHEAP, has long served as the primary safety net for families struggling to keep the lights on. In Kentucky, the program is administered by 23 Community Action Agencies and provides eligible households — those at or below 150% of the federal poverty level — with a one-time credit of up to $250 for a seasonal subsidy or up to $400 in a crisis. The report found that those amounts are not close to enough. In fiscal year 2025, LIHEAP distributed $33.3 million to customers of the 23 studied utilities. The total outstanding debt of customers who were disconnected over that same period was $68.6 million. Combining the two figures, the report estimated that more than $100 million would have been needed to prevent all disconnections. The gap between what LIHEAP provides and what low-income households actually need is even wider when measured against full affordability. The report estimated that LIHEAP covers between 1% and 9% of the gap between what eligible households pay and what would constitute an affordable bill. Making matters worse, LIHEAP’s future is uncertain. Federal funding for the program has declined from $89 million for Kentucky in fiscal year 2023 to $59.5 million in fiscal year 2025. The Trump administration’s proposed 2026 federal budget called for eliminating LIHEAP entirely, and in April 2025 the administration fired the entire LIHEAP staff, delaying the distribution of funds to states. Who bears the heaviest burden The report paints a detailed picture of which Kentuckians are most exposed to unaffordable energy costs. Low-income households face energy burdens five times higher than non-low-income households. Renters face burdens 1.5 times those of homeowners, a gap that persists regardless of how old the home is. Residents of manufactured housing spend 9.6% of their income on energy. And in four out of five utility territories with census tracts where the majority of residents are people of color, those tracts have higher average energy burdens than majority-white tracts served by the same utility. The human cost was visible in the social media responses this newsroom received. Halima Williams wrote that she paid $1,600 to KU over the past year and another $1,000 across her December and January bills alone — for a two-bedroom house where both occupants work during the day. Bobby Curtis asked simply, “Mine is 452 what is people to do foreal.” Mary Rest, facing a $600 bill, asked, “How do they expect someone to pay that?” Multiple respondents pointed to LGE and KU’s parent company profits as a source of frustration. Nathan Hoskins noted that PPL Corporation, which owns KU, reported $915 million in net profit during the first nine months of 2025, an increase of nearly $200 million over the same period the prior year. “Public Utilities should NEVER BE FOR PROFIT,” one commenter wrote. “THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE.” Rita DaVega asked about the role of the Public Service Commission, the state body that approves utility rates. “For once, I’d like to see them DENY a rate increase,” she wrote. “Who are these people that control the ‘show’?” Calls for action The report’s authors offered a series of policy recommendations, including the creation of a state-funded customer assistance program of at least $75 million annually to supplement the declining federal LIHEAP dollars. They also called for prohibiting disconnections during extreme temperatures and on weekends, setting a $100 minimum debt threshold before a utility can disconnect a customer, expanding weatherization programs, and ensuring the Public Service Commission has the authority to approve low-income rate designs. Under current Kentucky law, the PSC has consistently rejected proposals for income-based rate classifications, citing statutes that it interprets as prohibiting different rates for customers based on income. The report argues that legislative action is needed to give the commission explicit authority to address affordability through equitable rate designs and debt management programs. Some legislative movement is already underway. Gov. Andy Beshear has proposed a $75 million fund for utility bill assistance. A joint resolution from Sen. Scott Madon, R-Pineville, would direct the PSC to investigate ways to improve utility affordability for low-income and fixed-income residents. In 2025, a House bill that would have prohibited disconnections during extreme temperatures and limited them to weekday business hours did not pass. “I think this is such a huge problem, and I think people are really eager for some solutions,” Shelton said. “But there is a lot to consider in terms of understanding what can we get that’s actually going to be effective.” Meanwhile, the bills keep coming For many of the Kentuckians who responded to our call, the policy debate feels distant. They are dealing with the bills in front of them now. Sarah Wilson wrote that her January bill was $348 and her February bill was $436, and she was dreading whatever March would bring. Brittany Walters, who usually pays $200 to $300 in winter, received a $913 bill; when she called KU, she said, they blamed the cold and suggested she have her water heater inspected. Makenzie Brooks reported a bill over $500 and said that when she called, a representative told her the usage was “excessive” and offered to send someone to check the meter — for $90. Becks Sky, who has lived alone in a 1,000-square-foot house in Wilmore for 10 years, running her washer, dryer and dishwasher once a week each, said her bill had never topped $163. This month it was $249. “We’ve had winter storms like this before, plenty of times,” she wrote. Danielle Dishman, in an apartment, said her bill went from $130 to $230 and she regretted even plugging in her Christmas tree. “The sudden jump from my regular bill has doubled,” she wrote. “I’m like howwww!! This is so disappointing because the money has to be taken from somewhere else.” Somewhere else. That is the calculation that an estimated one in three Kentucky adults makes, according to census data: choosing which basic necessity — medicine, food, heat — to sacrifice so the lights stay on. 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