Manufacturers are Ohio’s largest block of energy customers. That’s why the OMA devotes much time and focus to energy developments, including legislation and regulatory proceedings.
As part of its mission to protect and grow Ohio manufacturing, the OMA organizes an annual energy conference and offers members the opportunity to join the OMA Energy Group, which provides special services to energy-intense manufacturers.
Once they have joined the OMA Energy Management Community, members can count on the latest information and expert analysis and guidance regarding industrial energy solutions, regulations, and state and federal developments.
Registration for the Ohio Manufacturers’ Energy Conference closes Monday!
Don’t miss out on hearing from energy experts like Joe Bowring, PJM’s independent market monitor, and Todd Snitchler, President and CEO of the Electric Power Supply Association. We will also hear from U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. Secure your ticket today before it’s too late.
PJM continues to make changes to its capacity auction construct and recently wrapped up a stakeholder process reviewing the participation of energy efficiency in the capacity market. A supermajority of stakeholders agreed with a consensus position that energy efficiency should be removed from consideration in the next base residual auction, which is set for this December. Energy efficiency accounted for less than 1% of resources cleared in PJM’s most recent auction. 9/5/2024
Middle River Power will continue to operate a 540-MW gas-fired power plant rather than proceed with a planned retirement, likely due to increased revenue from PJM’s capacity market. In its 2023 State of the Market Report, PJM’s Independent Market Monitor suggested that a doubling of market revenues would reduce units identified as uneconomic by 44%, close to ~15 GW of generation. Analysts are predicting that capacity prices could continue to rise, potentially hitting the price cap, which would incentivize many more power plants to continue to operate. 9/5/2024
Rumors continue to swirl about generation re-regulation in Ohio, fueled by a falsehood that Ohio will soon face a shortage of electricity. Read OMA’s Retooling Ohio Executive Summary for a synopsis on this threat to Ohio manufacturers. The full document is also available with more information about the economic impact of ending deregulation and alternative electricity policies that can strengthen our state for the economic road ahead.
The Ohio Manufacturers’ Energy Conference on Sep. 19 will feature a keynote panel addressing PJM’s recent capacity auction, the state of Ohio’s power grid, and more. Register now to attend. 9/5/2024
Utilities have continued to stoke fears that electric demand will exceed electric supply in a few years, leading to reliability concerns. The OMA has published a Myth vs. Fact document to address common themes often heard when discussing Ohio’s power grid and its ability to reliably provide power.
While parties seeking to gain from an energy shortfall crisis claim that there is an electric power supply shortfall, our grid operator PJM has procured 18% more power than it needs during peak grid stress. 8/27/2024
This week’s heat wave pushed up power use on the PJM regional electric grid. PJM issued a rare Maximum Generation/Load Management alert for Tuesday and Wednesday to handle the high load, which it did with plenty of power generation in reserve and even in excess of its reserve requirements.
Customers contributed with load curtailment if they were enrolled in such programs and in anticipation of a coincident peak hour. Check out PJM’s markets dashboard to catch instantaneous load, electricity price, mix of renewables and fossil fuels, and generation ready to go in reserve. 8/29/2024
This week, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) authorized three electric utilities to keep millions of dollars charged to customers to cover the costs of running two coal-fired plants. OMA’s energy engineering consultant, RunnerStone LLC, has calculated that Ohioans will have paid nearly $600 million in total subsidies to OVEC’s utility owners since 2017, and is expected to exceed $1 billion by 2030.
This order marks the PUCO’s first interpretation of provisions of House Bill 6 that extended cost recovery for those plants to 2030 via a new Legacy Generation Rider and enshrined the mechanism in statute. 8/21/2024
Last week, an op-ed from OMA President Ryan Augsburger was featured in UtilityDive, a national trade publication, warning against the calls to re-regulate Ohio’s energy market.
The piece highlights the strength of a competitive energy market untethered from government restrictions that can deliver reliable and affordable energy to consumers. 8/9/2024
This week according to its latest quarterly SEC filing report, FirstEnergy indicated that it will soon pay $120 million total to resolve two of the pending federal and state investigations into House Bill 6.
According to the filing, FirstEnergy has set aside $100 million to resolve the SEC investigation in addition to the $19.5 million for a civil lawsuit from the Ohio Attorney General. 8/8/2024
On Thurs., Sep. 19, the OMA will host its annual Ohio Manufacturers’ Energy Conference in Westerville, Ohio. Join other manufacturing and energy professionals to gain insights to maximize energy management.
This customer-focused event will feature keynote speaker Todd Snitchler, president of the Electric Power Supply Association and past Chair of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. There will also be case studies in energy management, on-site generation and procurement, in addition to energy market and power generation trend updates. 7/31/2024
This week, PJM capacity prices increased nearly tenfold from $28.92/MW-day to $269.92/MW-day in the 2025/26 Base Residual Auction.
The OMA issued a statement following the announcement, citing the years of delay of PJM’s auction and rule changes as the culprit of rising prices that will be passed on to customers. The increase is estimated to cost consumers nearly $12 billion.
Utilities have been posturing for re-regulation. Recently, FirstEnergy CEO Brian Tierney described the company’s openness to owning generation. Known as re-regulation, The OMA opposes allowing utilities to operate power generation under a regulated monopoly business model.
The OMA is a longtime defender of competitive markets for power generation, believing they are far preferable to government picking winners and losers under a regulated model. This topic will be covered in depth at the OMA Energy Conference on Sep. 19. 7/30/2024
The OMA’s energy experts, Runnerstone LLC, recently published a memo detailing the costs that Ohioans are paying to subsidize the uneconomic OVEC coal-fired power plants. By the end of the year, Ohioans are set to have paid nearly $600 million in total subsidies to OVEC’s utility owners since 2017, including nearly $200 million this year alone.
Based on historical and predicted future electricity prices, it is estimated that Ohioans could subsidize OVEC’s utility owners over $1 billion total by 2030, all of which directly profits utility shareholders. 7/23/2024
This week, the three-year deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) that FirstEnergy entered with prosecutors will end within the next 30 days.
FirstEnergy entered the agreement on July 21, 2021, in the wake of the House Bill 6 corruption scandal, paying a $230 million fine and an admission to bribing then Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, PUCO Chair Sam Randazzo, and others.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office has not dropped the charge of wire fraud or the possibility of criminal prosecution or civil lawsuit related to the bribery scandal. Additionally, FirstEnergy must continue to cooperate with the government, disclose its contributions to 501(c)(4) nonprofits, and refrain from any statements contradicting its acceptance of responsibility. 7/23/2024
PJM Interconnection, Ohio’s regional grid operator, opened the bidding window this week for its auction for the June 2025 to May 2026 delivery year. This auction is held to procure a sufficient amount of generation capacity for each year and to provide resource adequacy and reliability on a long-term basis at a reasonable cost. PJM President Manu Asthana has previously remarked that the capacity auction continues to be their best tool to ensure reliability at competitive prices in PJM. The bidding window will close on July 23 and results will be reported on July 30.
The auction arrives at a time when utilities have been stoking a scare that electric demand will exceed electric supply in a few years, leading to reliability concerns. Meanwhile, OMA-commissioned research suggests the future demand shortages are overstated.
OMA’s energy engineering firm, RunnerStone LLC, has previously published a memo summarizing the recent changes made to PJM’s generation capacity market. The changes will be discussed at the OMA’s Energy Conference on Sep. 14. 7/10/2024
This week, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) approved an unopposed settlement agreement with AEP, requiring the company to adopt stronger reliability standards.
The changes come in the form of decreasing the System Average Interruption Frequency Index (SAIFI), which is the average number of interruptions per customer, lowering it from 1.18 to 1.13.
The OMA was the only C&I involved in the case, bringing a win for customers to ensure fewer outages and more grid reliability. The standards will take effect in Jan. 2025. The full agreement can be found here. 7/10/2024
The Federal Energy Advocate (FEA) at the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) has urged the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to reconsider sweeping rules adopted in May to shore-up long-term transmission projects at the expense of reliability and costs to consumers, Gongwer reports.
The Ohio FEA argued that the rule requires transmission providers to adopt and maintain a 20-year planning horizon when vetting future facilities without seeking state support and without consideration of how those projects will improve reliability at reasonable rates to consumers. The FEA argued that the result will be a transmission grid that is “not built primarily for reliability but to meet political and corporate goals.” 6/25/2024
In a recent Cleveland.com editorial, former PUCO Chairman Todd Snitchler shines a light on the myth that re-regulation of energy markets would improve energy reliability.
Snitchler notes that a market-driven energy sector has every advantage over utility-owned. Most notably, that a market-driven energy sector has every incentive to not only be reliable, but also keep rates low, or risk losing to a competitor.
The OMA agrees with Snitchler that markets, not government, should drive innovation, competition, and value. Read more on the history of energy deregulation, the dangers of re-regulation, and why the free market is best suited to solve problems in RetoolingOhio.
6/26/2024
This week, the House passed House Bill 79 to empower electric utilities at the expense of customers under the guise of boosting energy efficiency. Under the bill, electric utilities are given new authority to control renewable energy plants they do not own, including the ability to override and shut down competitively owned generation without the owner’s consent. This could include manufacturer-sited renewable energy and other intermittent resources.
The OMA expressed concern with the bill to the House Public Utilities Committee last year prior to its passage. 6/27/2024
Recently released text messages between then-Attorney General Mike DeWine and FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones reveal DeWine soliciting financial support from FirstEnergy in his 2018 bid for Governor.
Jones forwarded the request to Mike Dowling, then a vice-president at FirstEnergy, who wired the funds. Both Jones and Dowling were indicted earlier this year on bribery charges related to the House Bill 6 scandal. 6/17/2024
Senator Sherrod Brown this week announced his support of a resolution halting the U.S. EPA’s Clean Power Plan 2.0, imposing strict emission requirements on coal and gas-fired power plants. “We applaud the leadership of Sen. Sherrod Brown for supporting the effort to repeal the Clean Power Plan 2.0,” OMA President Ryan Augsburger said in a statement this week. “This policy and its unobtainable standards would hamstring new competitive natural gas power plants, reduce production, discourage investment in new generation, and reduce grid reliability.” The resolution, introduced in both chambers, has support from 182 total members of Congress, including Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, and Congressman Troy Balderson (OH-12), who introduced the resolution in the House. 6/12/2024
For more information on the OMA’s Energy Management Community, get in touch with us today.
