AES Ohio proposes two SEET analyses, Garavaglia said in recently filed testimony before the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio.
Both of the analyses ”would result in customer refunds of either $1.58 million or $1.6 million,” Garavaglia said.
A transcript of the testimony was released after a Ohio Supreme Court ruling this summer that said state utility regulators erred when they let AES Ohio keep $61 million in what a consumers’ advocacy office called “overearnings.”
The Office of the Ohio Consumers Counsel sees the court’s ruling as a vindication of efforts to protest what it considers unlawful overcharges of Dayton-area customers.
“AES is trying to rob Ohio families twice,” Maureen Willis, agency director for the consumers office, said in a statement. “First by overcharging them, and now by fighting refunds even after the Supreme Court said the law requires them. Ohio families deserve every dollar back, with interest.”
The state’s top court returned the case to state regulators, where the consumers’ advocates have said they will push for $61 million to be refunded.
The consumers’ office contends that Dayton electric customers were charged too much in 2019 and 2020.
State law at the time said that if a utility makes profits deemed too high under an electric security plan — an operating plan for Ohio electric utilities — it must give the money back, according to the consumers office.
In its ruling earlier this month, the Ohio Supreme Court remanded the case back to the PUCO for further analysis.
In testimony shared with the PUCO, Garavaglia said “AES Ohio’s fragile financial condition” in 2018 and 2019 supported the notion that the utility did not have “significantly excessive earnings” in those years.
In fact, he told regulators that, starting in 2015, AES Ohio began to experience “significant declines to its earnings.”
“AES Ohio concluded that the value of its assets had declined so significantly, that the values of those assets as stated on AES Ohio’s balance sheet exceeded their fair value,” Garavaglia testified.
He added that AES Ohio wrote off more than $1 billion of the value of assets on its books, causing a related decrease in the company’s equity.
“The fact that AES Ohio’s financial condition was fragile supports a determination that AES Ohio did not have significantly excessive earnings in 2018 and 2019,” the CFO testified.
A spokeswoman for AES Ohio told this newspaper in August it was reviewing the court’s ruling.
“The Ohio Supreme Court rejected OCC’s (the Office of the Ohio Consumers Counsel) arguments for a $61 million refund; instead, it required the PUCO to conduct a new SEET analysis for 2018 and 2019 with additional guidance,” a spokeswoman for AES Ohio said more recently. “The PUCO set a new hearing schedule, and AES Ohio has submitted testimony and a calculation that considers the case facts and court order. AES Ohio’s testimony proposes a $1.6 million refund to customers consistent with the court’s decision.”
A spokesman for Willis has cautioned that refunds are not a certainty.
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