PUCO restores 2013 DP&L electric rates, dropping rates

PUCO says rates will fall slightly

The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) voted Friday to allow Dayton Power & Light (DP&L) to return to its 2013 electric utility rates.

The result is that rates for residential DP&L customers are expected to fall slightly, according to Matt Schilling, a PUCO spokesman.

Rates will fall by $3.81 for 1,000 kilowatt hours of use for residential customers, Schilling said. One kilowatt hour is enough to work on a computer for five to 10 hours or cook breakfast for a family of four.

DP&L is expected to file new tariffs within seven days. As soon as that happens, the new rates will go into effect, Schilling said.

“Rates are still going down for everybody,” he said.

He said that with the new rates, a service stability rider for DP&L is “going away,” to be replaced with a “retail stabilization charge.”

The upshot (according to the PUCO) is that rates will not increase as the Office of Ohio Consumers’s Counsel feared. According to the counsel’s office, a restoration of the 2013 rates means DP&L residential customers will pay $8 a month more than they pay now.

That’s a number that a spokeswoman for DP&L earlier this month disputed. But that spokeswoman did not offer an alternative calculation.

Reached this morning, a DP&L spokeswoman said the company may have a statement on the PUCO votes later today.

While every customer will see a reduction, that is only temporary until a new electric security plan for DP&L is approved, Schilling cautioned.

The pair of PUCO voice votes Friday on agenda items linked to DP&L came in a five-minute meeting in Columbus.

RELATED: Consumers' Counsel office says DP&L request will cost electric consumers more

RELATED: Residents can react publicly to DP&L rate hike proposals

RELATED: DP&L eyes two sets of higher charges

The votes also come some two months after an Ohio Supreme Court decision that reversed a PUCO ruling that let DP&L charge customers extra in an “electric security plan service stability rider.”

That rider had been designed to help protect DP&L as customers were free to switch to new power providers in a more competitive market.

The Consumers’ Counsel’s office and an organization called the Industrial Energy Users of Ohio earlier this year appealed against the rider. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s June decision, both organizations urged the PUCO to act quickly, halting what it says is a nearly $10 monthly charge.

“Since Jan. 1, 2014, DP&L has taken approximately $285 million in subsidies from customers in the Dayton area —where there is financial distress and a poverty level of 35 percent — through its inaptly named service stability charge,” the counsel’s office has argued in the past.

About a month after the Supreme Court ruling, in a July 27 filing with the PUCO, DP&L said that its 2013 rates “must be put back into effect,” until the PUCO approves a new service stability rider.

It was those rates that the counsel’s office argued would make electricity more expensive for DP&L customers.

A message seeking comment was sent to the Consumers’ Counsel’s office.

About the Author