State utility regulators plan to release their solution Thursday to concerns raised by small businesses and others about American Electric Power rates. Meanwhile, statewide groups representing farmers, school boards and churches are among the latest to file complaints.
Since the beginning of the year, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio has received 1,018 complaints about the AEP rates, of which 410 were about business rates. The latter includes letters sent in the past few days from the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation, the Ohio School Boards Association and the Catholic Conference of Ohio.
Notably, the Farm Bureau is asking the PUCO and AEP to press the reset button and withdraw the current rates. If that were to happen, a modified version of the 2011 rates would take effect while the parties worked to come up with a new proposal.
The benefit of doing that is, “you are going to give smaller customers rate relief right now,” said Dale Arnold, director of energy policy for the farmers group. He thinks the problems with the rates are too great to simply repair the existing plan, which the PUCO unanimously approved in December.
The rates, which led to a 40 percent surge in electricity costs for some customers, are based on an agreement struck last fall by about two dozen companies and groups, including AEP and the PUCO staff. Any of the groups can withdraw from the agreement, though none have done so. AEP is the only participant that can unilaterally veto the plan under Ohio law.
The PUCO has also received many complaints from people with all-electric houses, who say their costs have risen more than 20 percent. Previously, AEP charged no base generation rate for houses that use more than 800 kilowatt-hours of electricity per month. While all residential customers benefited from the previous policy, the greatest benefits went to all-electric houses, which routinely use 2,000 kilowatt-hours or more per month.
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