Tyronda said Alabama Power did not look into the cause of her high bill and stuck with its suggestion the family turn to Community Action. “I didn’t ask you for your help to pay the bill,” Tyronda Curry-Hurst said about Alabama Power. They help distribute different aid programs - in this case, LIHEAP.īut Curry-Hurst’s wife, Tyronda, was not satisfied with Alabama Power’s response. These types of agencies can be private or public and are usually local. If she talked to the company, maybe she’d find out about an appliance that drew too much power, or that someone was illegally siphoning their electricity.īut when she called Alabama Power, instead of looking for the cause, the representative told Curry-Hurst to check out her local Community Action group to get financial help. The family hadn’t changed anything with their lifestyle to explain the jump. The hope was for Alabama Power to help her understand the reason for the big expense, which Dolabriel Curry-Hurst called a huge financial hit.

Call Alabama Power,’” Dolabriel Curry-Hurst said. Gulf States Newsroom Dolabriel Curry-Hurst listens to her wife talk about the impact of an unusually large power bill on their fixed-income household on July 13, 2023, in Duncanville, Alabama.Ĭurry-Hurst’s first instinct was to ignore the more than $700 bill. “The scale of the problem is huge and the scale of the funding that is being deployed to address the problem is not,” said William Bryan, director of research at SEEA. Only about 12% of eligible families in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana received LIHEAP help in 2021. The bad news - the program doesn’t have nearly enough money to cover everyone who needs it. Experts praise it for providing financial assistance to cover energy bills. The good news is that help exists - the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). “You can go buy a chicken.”īut when her power bill doubled in January, jumping to more than $700, she had to learn a different lesson: Where do you turn to for help when your power bill skyrockets?Ībout one out of every three people in the South struggles to pay their power bills, according to the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance (SEEA). “Just the idea they see us going to get eggs every day is leaving the impression that I don’t have to go to Walmart,” Dolabriel Curry-Hurst said. But Curry-Hurst wanted to teach her kids a lesson in self-sufficiency. It’s a small operation with a few chickens and pigs. That’s part of the reason she started farming on her land in Duncanville, Alabama - a rural spot an hour southwest of Birmingham.

Dolabriel Curry-Hurst doesn’t believe in handouts.

Alabama power utility bill