EDENTON, N.C.

After being hit with two electricity rate increases in less than a year, Councilman Steve Biggs has asked the town to look into selling its electrical system.

Edenton is one of 32 municipalities that operate electric systems through the North Carolina Eastern Municipal Power Agency, which falls under the auspices of ElectriCities, a nonprofit formed in 1965 by participating towns and cities.

Biggs said he would like to find out if there’s "any way we can get out of" the town’s membership in ElectriCities.

Members keep "getting rate increase after rate increase," Biggs said. "I hate for us to sit back and keep taking all these increases."

"If it will save the consumer and the town money, the town should at least look" at asking Albemarle Electric, Dominion Power or others to take over the town’s electrical system, Biggs said.

Albemarle Electric Membership Corp. is a non profit cooperative based in Hertford. Dominion North Carolina Power is an investor-owned electric utility. The

Richmond-based utility in Virginia is called Dominion Virginia Power.

The North Carolina Eastern Municipal Power Agency boosted prices to municipalities – including Edenton – by 14 percent Aug. 1 and another 4 percent last month. It cited hikes in projected plant capital and operating expenses, debt service and lower investment income as reasons for the increases.

The town passed along a 12.7 percent increase in electricity costs last summer, followed by a 4 percent rate hike with this month’s bills.

The a agency owns interests in two coal-fired plants and three nuclear units in the state from which it gets most of its power; additional energy is purchased through long-term supplemental contracts with Raleigh-based Progress Energy.

Ken Raber, a senior vice president with the power agency, told the Town Council in February that the agency’s challenge is its debt.

Raber told the council the agency has a $700 million annual budget yet only a $5 million working capital policy. Efforts are being made to build capital, he said, but it would take "several years to see the impact."

Town Manager Anne-Marie Knighton said she talked Wednesday with ElectriCities, which agreed to give a report to the council at its March 23 meeting.

"They did tell me the sale can only be to a tax-exempt entity because bonds that were issued to build the power plants for Progress Energy are tax-exempt bonds," she said.

The city of Southport had asked questions similar to those raised by Biggs, and ElectriCities research determined that Albemarle Electric qualified as a tax-exempt entity, Knighton said.

Edenton council members stressed in February that they had no choice but to pass along the increases.

"It’s not us raising the rates," Councilman Jimmy Stallings said at the time. "We don’t have any choice – the town does not have the funds to absorb it."