Imagine a utility receives $57 million from the Department of Energy and a matching amount from its customers, then uses that money to demonstrate how new technologies could save millions more. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal, right? Not if you’re FirstEnergy, whose business model doesn’t call for saving money.
FirstEnergy – serving several states in the Mid-Atlantic region, including Ohio where the power company is currently requesting a $4 billion bailout of its uneconomical power plants – recently filed a long-term infrastructure-improvement plan in Pennsylvania, setting out its strategy for modernizing the grid. And despite having seen the benefits firsthand, the utility didn’t include voltage optimization – or using technology to “right-size” the amount of voltage customers receive – in its plan.
Since utilities likely won’t modernize the grid on their own, Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) often intervenes before state public utility commissions. And in this case, EDF recommends the Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission (PUC) should not approve FirstEnergy’s grid modernization plan unless it includes voltage optimization. Read More
FirstEnergy’s plea to keep four aging power plants alive will cost Ohio customers almost $4 billion, according to a new study out today by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA). The proposal is currently in front of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO).
Ohio utilities FirstEnergy and AEP, as readers of this blog know too well, want the Buckeye State to bail out their uneconomic power plants. Combined, their proposals before the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) would run Ohioans nearly $6 billion in increased costs. We understand where the companies’ greedy desire for subsidies comes from, but the arguments for them have become downright silly.
Clean energy investments are soaring worldwide, and the United States is no exception with $56 billion going toward renewable generation in 2015, an 8-percent increase over the year before.
