Saturday, March 22, 2014 at 12:58 PM ET | Written by: Dan Gearino | Columbus Dispatch AEP expects you to pay for repair work if PUCO approves Related Topics: AEP Ohio, Outages & Restoration, Regulatory Get ready to pay your share for American Electric Power repairs that were needed as a result of the June 2012 windstorm. The only question is how much. The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio is reviewing final arguments from the utility and from consumer advocates, with a decision likely in the next few months. AEP and nearly all other participants have agreed on a dollar figure of $57.5 million, which is $6 million less than AEP had originally sought. Customers would pay it off through their electricity bills with 12 monthly charges of $2.34 per household and $9.67 per business. The charges are the same regardless of the customer’s energy use. “It is now time for customers to reimburse the company for the extraordinary efforts undertaken to restore service in the aftermath of the catastrophic major storm,” the company said in a filing this month. The holdout is the Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, which says that if regulators throw out the imprudent charges and the charges that do not qualify for this type of repayment, the total would be less than $25 million. “While its customers mind their family budgets, AEP Ohio hired highly expensive services for storm repair that were more than needed and added millions of dollars in imprudent and unreasonable costs to the final bill that AEP Ohio wants the PUCO to present to customers,” Terry Etter, an attorney for the consumer advocate, said in a filing. The PUCO’s staff has been part of negotiations and is recommending that the agency’s governing board approve the $57.5 million figure. The PUCO board can accept or reject the staff’s advice. If approved, $57.5 million would be the largest payment of this type in state history. For a recent comparison, the summer 2008 windstorm related to Hurricane Ike led to about $30 million worth of repair charges on customer bills. The 2012 storm cut power for about half of the company’s 1.5 million Ohio customers, some for more than a week. In Ohio’s regulatory system, utilities pay for storm repairs with the expectation that customers will eventually pay them back. The utilities say this gives them the necessary latitude to spend what is needed to restore power as quickly as possible. Many customers balk at the possibility that their bills will rise. They point to years of AEP rate increases and wonder why the company doesn’t have enough money to cover the repairs on its own. More than 100 customers have filed comments with the PUCO in this case. “It just doesn’t need to be that much,” said Pam Clegg of Westerville, referring to the amount AEP is requesting. “Anything (we) can do to try to rein that in a little bit would help the average customer.” The consumers’ counsel is raising questions about several of AEP’s expenses. The largest is a $15.1 million payment for Storm Services LLC, a company that provides temporary housing and food for workers doing storm cleanup. The agency says that the costs were exorbitant considering that there were less-expensive food and lodging options available in June 2012. The larger issue, the counsel said in a filing, is that consumers already have paid dearly for the power failures and should not be asked to pay for things that are inappropriate. “Very few, if any, of AEP Ohio’s customers were compensated for this expense and inconvenience,” the counsel’s office said. “The PUCO should not add to the expense these customers have already suffered by approving a settlement that gives AEP Ohio more than the reasonable and prudent costs it incurred from the storms.”
Posted on: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 02:02:19 +0000
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