If approved, the monthly bill for a typical residential customer using 1,000 kWh would increase by 9%, an increase the Dayton electric service provider said keeps its rates in line with its peers.
This is a rate increase that, if enacted, would affect all Dayton-area customers. The AES Ohio “standard service offer” covers energy supply or generation. At issue here are distribution rates, charges meant to cover the cost of delivering electricity from power plants to homes and offices.
AES Ohio said it has committed an additional $1 million for its “gift of power” program, a fund meant to help residential customers unable to pay electric bills and facing disconnection.
The Office of the Ohio Consumers Counsel said AES had requested a $235 million increase. The counsel’s office said it helped reduce the increase by about $70 million, pushing for the $1 million a year in shareholder-funded bill payment assistance.
Often, when utilities propose to raise rates, they work with interested parties on refining the proposal. Originally, the company had applied to raise rates by 14%.
The settlement takes into account what AES Ohio says it has been investing in infrastructure to improve safety, reliability and resilience.
“The investments AES Ohio has made in our infrastructure and technology are about reliably delivering electricity and meeting our customers’ expectations,” AES Ohio President Tom Raga said in a statement. “We greatly value the collaboration with our stakeholders and the engagement of our customers as we work together to ensure a reliable and modern energy future for West Central Ohio.”
If approved by the PUCO, the settlement will “allow AES Ohio to move forward in recovering investments and managing costs essential to sustaining high-quality service and preparing for future demand,” the company said.
For an hour Thursday evening, a dozen Dayton-area residents told Ohio utility regulators that they have had it with price hikes, asking that they lower or block a proposed 9% increase in AES Ohio electric distribution rates.
The 9% proposed increase negotiated by AES Ohio and intervening parties in a new settlement may be better than the 14% AES first sought. But it’s still too much, residents told representatives of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) in a public hearing at Dayton’s city hall.
It was the second hearing on the proposed rate hike. The first was held last week.
“I may be able to handle the increase,” local Realtor Sham Reddy said at the hearing. “But there are hundreds of thousands of people who can’t handle it.”
The PUCO controls the next steps. An evidentiary hearing on the proposed increase is set for 10 a.m. Sept. 9 in Columbus, with a commission vote expected early in 2026.
“Frankly, I think it (the increase) should be zero,” resident Quinn Combs said at the hearing.
Justine Kelly, a Dayton resident, said she has seen her average monthly bill increase from $111 in 2020 to $234 last year, though she lives in the same house.
“The cost of everything is going up,” she said.
Retail electricity prices have jumped faster than the rate of inflation since 2022, and the U.S. Energy Information Administration said in May it expects them to continue rising through 2026.
Part of the issue is greater demand. Nationally, the average residential electric rate has risen more than 30% since 2020, the New York Times recently reported, driven at least in part by the growth of data centers in states like Ohio and Virginia.
If you didn’t make it to the public hearing, you can still share your views.
Written comments can also be addressed to the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, 180 E. Broad St., Columbus, Ohio, 43215.
Public comments can also be filed online, and all comments should reference AES Ohio case docket number 24-1009-EL-AIR.
AES Ohio, the former Dayton Power & Light, has about 530,000 customers in west central Ohio.
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