The office also wants regulators to seek refunds “where costs were unlawfully collected.”
“The utilities ran the coal plants on a 24/7 basis, using a ‘must-run’ commitment status, meaning that the plants would keep running even though the utilities knew in advance the plants would lose money,” the office said in a brief filed Feb. 10. “And lose money they did.”
From 2021 to 2023, consumers paid $189 million for the operation of those coal plants, the office said.
AES Ohio, the former Dayton Power & Light, with other Ohio power companies, make up OVEC, which operates older, coal-fired power plants located on the Ohio River, one of them in Indiana.
The OCC’s filing focuses on how it says OVEC operated its Kyger Creek and Clifty Creek coal plants during an audit period. The plants cost more to run than the electricity they produced was worth in the market, the office argues.
“Ohio consumers should never have been forced to bankroll losses from uneconomic, decades-old coal plants,” Maureen Willis, agency director of the Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, said in a statement. “Utilities continued running these plants knowing that consumers, not shareholders, would absorb the losses.”
The coal plants are owned by a consortium of eight utilities that make up OVEC. They sell their generation into the electric market operated by PJM Interconnection.
Last August, the Ohio Manufacturers Association said Ohio electric ratepayers subsidized more than $683 million dollars in losses for OVEC’s operations.
“Ohio consumers —including AES Ohio customers in Dayton — paid millions of dollars to cover losses from OVEC coal plants that were more expensive to run than the power they produced was worth," a spokesman for the consumer’s office said.
However, in a reply brief with the PUCO, OVEC said an auditor determined that a must-run operation for the coal plants was “prudent.”
“The intervenors’ challenges to the auditor’s determinations mix Monday morning-quarterbacking, cherry-picking of the record, reliance upon witnesses with no practical experience, and outright mischaracterizations,” the brief said.
A third-party auditor found that AES Ohio, AEP Ohio, and Duke “all acted reasonably and prudently on their OVEC interests. PUCO staff has concurred with the auditor’s assessment. The PUCO is now reviewing the findings after last year’s hearing and briefings and their decision is pending,” a spokeswoman for AES Ohio said in a statement.
A spokesman for Columbus power provider American Electric Power referred to the reply brief.
AES Ohio has a 4.9% stake in OVEC, while AEP’s stake exceeds 39%.
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