What’s Wrong With This Picture?

Utilities seek another set of very expensive subsidies in the legislature, this time in the name of “national security.” Their proposal, embodied in HB 239 and SB 155, would funnel upwards of $300 million more per year, indefinitely, to the utilities.

Ohio’s investor-owned electric utilities are part owners of the Ohio Valley Electric Corporation (OVEC) power plants. OVEC owns and operates two electricity generating complexes: Kyger Creek Power Plant, near Gallipolis, Ohio, and Clifty Creek Power Plant, near Madison, Indiana.

OVEC was formed in the early 1950s by investor-owned utilities to generate electricity to meet the substantial electric power requirements of the uranium enrichment facilities then under construction by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) just south of Piketon, Ohio.

The Piketon nuclear enrichment site was opened in 1952 and closed on September 30, 2006. The utilities were notified in 2000 that the contract with Piketon would be canceled. The contract terminated in 2003. The two plants ran at, or less than half of, full load in 2016.

Meanwhile, the utilities have already been paid transition revenues for these and other plants, collected from customers, to help transition to a fully competitive generation market. The utilities, thus, are seeking to be paid again for the same plants.

Read more in this OMA white paper. 6/8/2017