Dive Brief:
- Ohio utilities requesting assistance in keeping older coal plants operating have also tried to conceal financial data that could be relevant to assessing the deal, Midwest Energy News reports.
- FirstEnergy, Duke Energy and American Electric Power have asked the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio to guarantee income from their plants, arguing that the generation will be cheaper for consumers in the long run.
- The Sierra Club filed testimony including redacted data from Duke Energy, determining the arrangement would not be beneficial to ratepayers in the next 10 years and is not in line with the state's move towards competitive markets.
Dive Insight:
Back in October, AEP Ohio asked the state PUC to guarantee income from 4 coal plants, saying flawed markets and "increasingly onerous" emissions regulations would eventually make the plants unprofitable, but that they are necessary for electric reliability.
Keeping the coal facilities running may be more expensive in the short-term, but the long view is better for consumers according to the three utilities. The Sierra Club, however, filed testimony by Sarah Jackson, an associate at Synapse Energy Economics, which concluded the deal would still be a net cost to ratepayers a decade out.
Duke's plan, Jackson concluded, "may be adverse to the public interest and contrary to the State of Ohio's transition to competitive retail markets. ... This type of rate adjustment mechanism is inappropriate in a competitive retail market environment as it seeks to effectively shift all the risk ... to customers, who will essentially become owners of generation they are not directly using."
The Sierra Club's testimony contains charts and large sections of data regarding the price stabilization rider which have been redacted, under a protective order requested by Duke. According to Midwestern Energy News, First Energy is seeking to avoid providing data Sierra Club has requested.