AES Ohio names higher standard ‘price to compare’

That will mean higher electric bills, if other factors are unchanged, such as usage. The price on the Energy Choice Ohio comparison charge web page for AES Ohio on Tuesday was $0.0858 per kWh.

You can compare AES Ohio’s price to other providers at www.energychoice.ohio.gov.

A spokesman for the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio said AES filed supporting paperwork for the new price late last week.

The new price is the outcome of last month’s wholesale auction for energy supply, combined with the results from an auction in October last year.

That blended auction prices set the “price to compare” or AES Ohio standard service offer, sometimes called “SSO.”

The SSO is a convenient way to see who’s charging more for one part of a customer’s electric bill, supply or generation.

In 2022, the average annual amount of electricity sold to a U.S. residential electric-utility customer was 10,791 kilowatt-hours (kWh), an average of about 899 kWh per month, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

In Ohio, customers may choose their energy supplier. The Energy Choice Ohio web site is the way to compare different offers from different suppliers. State regulators oversee the web site.

The auction results are relevant to customers who don’t participate in local government aggregation groups or who enroll directly with suppliers other than AES Ohio (the former Dayton Power & Light).

About 30% of AES Ohio customers take AES Ohio’s energy supply.

The market-based auction results are separate from AES Ohio’s investments and rates for transmission and distribution that are also subject to approval by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (or “PUCO”).

If a customer chooses AES Ohio’s SSO for their energy supply, the company charges the price to compare with no mark-up based on the auctions, the company said.

AES Ohio has 539,000 residential, commercial and industrial customers in a 6,000-square-mile service area in West Central Ohio. The utility operates and maintains more than 1,600 miles of transmission lines, 13,000 miles of overhead distribution lines, 4,500 miles of underground distribution lines and 160 substations feeding 490 distribution circuits.