Last week, the PUCO confirmed Duke’s calculations to translate FERC-approved transmission expenses into rates paid by customers, Schilling said.
For Duke customers in Butler and Warren counties, the bottom line is an increase of $2.85 on a monthly bill based on 1,000 kWh of usage. (In 2022, U.S. residential electric customers used an average of about 899 kWh per month.)
The Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel (OCC) has opposed the increase.
“Duke’s electricity consumers are seeing round after round of rate increases, this time for transmission charges, with residential consumers getting hit the hardest. There seems to be no end in sight,” Maureen Willis, agency director of the consumers’ counsel, said in a statement.
The OCC has filed a complaint with FERC about supplemental transmission projects, arguing that they receive “no review by the state or PJM Interconnection (the Midwest’s regional electric power grid operator) of their reasonableness or prudence.”
Ohio utilities such as Dayton-area electric utility AES Ohio and Duke Energy last year asked the FERC to reject the complaint.
Since 2017, electric utilities in Ohio have added more than $7.8 billion in supplemental transmission project costs to their local transmission rates charged to consumers, according to the OCC.
“Charges to consumers for supplemental transmission projects are out of control,” the office said in a filing with the PUCO.
In April, Duke applied with the PUCO for a new, three-year electric security plan, or operating plan, starting June 1, 2025. A “typical” residential customer using 1,000 kWh a month could see the distribution portion of his or her bill increase annually by about $135 at the end of 2028, the OCC has said.
A representative of Duke did not respond to a message seeking comment.
Duke has about 780,000 electric service customers in Ohio, mostly in Butler, Warren, Hamilton, Clermont and Brown counties.
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