With the hot and muggy dog days of summer upon us, it's easy to forget about that incredible deep freeze we had back in February. Luckily, the power companies are there to remind us by requesting a price hike going forward for all utility customers in the state, including all of us on PSO here in Lawton.

While fuel costs soared for everyone affected by the freeze, Texas was the state every media outlet focused on the most. The way their energy economy is set up, people were anticipating bills in the tens of thousands of dollars due to what some called 'amazingly poor planning by the energy companies.'

In an effort to recoup what was spent on fuel and energy, top companies like Oklahoma Gas & Electric and PSO have asked the OK Corporation Commission for a bail out. They want to hike the price of fuel for a set amount of time to pay back the additional costs which would average an extra +/-$4 per month per consumer for the next decade.

This big ask isn't without its opponents though. Specialty and consumer groups are pretty critical of this motion from big energy, saying these companies make billions each year in pure profit so they can afford to absorb a once-in-a-lifetime event such as this. One group called VOICE - Voices Organized In Civic Engagement - is challenging the suggestion that big energy groups like OG&E and PSO took prudent and reasonable actions during the freeze and are instead looking to protect their monopoly's so-called "financial secrets."

OG&E is currently petitioning the Oklahoma Corporation Commission for an $875million rate hike. PSO is asking the same for $732.5million. Even though PSO's request is smaller, due to the shorter list of customers, the $4 added cost will be among the highest per-consumer across the board.

Is it wrong for them to seek out recouping their money? I don't think so. We needed it, we used it, we should pay for it. After seeing some Texans get $20,000 utility bills, I'd be happy to pay it out $4 at a time.

All the same, if they didn't properly prepare for the forecast we had nearly three weeks in advance, it might be understandable that these huge profit-earning corporations reap what they sow and eat it out of their own coffers.

The hearings for all of this wild madness will start in October.

LOOK: Best Beers From Every State

To find the best beer in each state and Washington D.C., Stacker analyzed January 2020 data from BeerAdvocate, a website that gathers user scores for beer in real-time. BeerAdvocate makes its determinations by compiling consumer ratings for all 50 states and Washington D.C. and applying a weighted rank to each. The weighted rank pulls the beer toward the list's average based on the number of ratings it has and aims to allow lesser-known beers to increase in rank. Only beers with at least 10 rankings to be considered; we took it a step further to only include beers with at least 100 user rankings in our gallery. Keep reading to find out what the best beer is in each of the 50 states and Washington D.C.

25 True Crime Locations: What Do They Look Like Today?

Below, find out where 25 of the most infamous crimes in history took place — and what the locations are used for today. (If they've been left standing.)

LOOK: See how much gasoline cost the year you started driving

To find out more about how has the price of gas changed throughout the years, Stacker ran the numbers on the cost of a gallon of gasoline for each of the last 84 years. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (released in April 2020), we analyzed the average price for a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline from 1976 to 2020 along with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for unleaded regular gasoline from 1937 to 1976, including the absolute and inflation-adjusted prices for each year.

Read on to explore the cost of gas over time and rediscover just how much a gallon was when you first started driving.

LOOK: Famous Historic Homes in Every State

More From KZCD-FM