AES Ohio, a Dayton electric service provider owned by a Virginia company, and CenterPoint Energy, a Houston-based company that provides natural gas service, are separate companies.
CenterPoint Energy said its proposal, if approved, would mean an increase of approximately $23 per month for the “average residential customer” receiving the company’s natural gas service.
“CEOH’s (CenterPoint Energy Ohio’s) application is being filed in part to recognize in rate base the investment in pipelines, meters, and other jurisdictional assets that CEOH has made since its last rate case ... and to recover revenues sufficient enough to pay for CEOH’s operating expenses, service CEOH’s debt, and provide a reasonable rate of return on its property used and useful in the rendition of natural gas service to its customers,” the company said in its recent filing with the PUCO.
Alyssia Oshodi, CenterPoint’s director of communications, said the company has invested some $830 million into its natural gas infrastructure since 2018. That includes 30,000 new meters, and nearly 400 miles of steel and cast-iron pipelines, including new service lines for new businesses and residential areas.
“To tie it all together, a lot in new investments that we’ve made in Ohio,” she said.
AES Ohio plans
In a sample of a letter Thomas Raga, president of local electric utility AES Ohio, sent or is sending to local governments, he said AES would file with the PUCO by Nov. 29 for a rate increase that would raise monthly electric bills by $21.75, a more than 14% increase for customers using a certain amount of electricity.
“AES Ohio will ask the PUCO to approve rates that include these investments and align the value of electric distribution service with its costs,” he said in the letter filed with the PUCO. “If the PUCO approves this request, then the monthly bill for a typical residential customer using 1,000 kWh (kilowatt hours) would increase by $21.75, a 14.2% increase to the total bill for Standard Service Offer customers.”
Residential customers who have AES Ohio as their supplier are “standard service offer” customers. If you have another electric service supplier, that category doesn’t apply to you.
Credit: Thomas Gnau/Staff
Credit: Thomas Gnau/Staff
“AES Ohio is mindful of the impact that these rates would have on our customers and will continue to offer a variety of assistance programs to support them, including the Gift of Power for customers who have suffered recent financial hardship,” Raga wrote.
“The Gift of Power” is an AES assistance program for customers who need help paying electric bills.
Since 2015, AES Ohio’s program has distributed $1.3 million to more than 3,500 local families, the utility said last year.
The PUCO’s review process includes a “thorough and independent audit of AES Ohio’s costs, public hearings, and opportunities for customer comment,” Raga also said in his letter.
A spokesman for the PUCO said he expects a process for weighing AES Ohio’s proposal to take about 275 days.
“The process for a distribution rate case for electric and natural gas company is the same, so CenterPoint and AES’s application will follow a similar timeline,” said Matt Schilling, the PUCO spokesman.
AES Ohio serves more than 20 counties in Western Ohio.
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