A new bill was recently introduced in the Ohio House that would give utilities the ability to create voluntary demand response programs for residential and small commercial customers. Large commercial and industrial customers already have access to voluntary demand response programs through competitive business providers.

Demand response is an eligible capacity resource in the PJM capacity auction and can have the effect of lowering the price of electric capacity. However, it is not common for residential and small business customers to enroll with competitive demand response providers, and this resource remains underutilized. The proposed bill would allow utilities to create incentivized programs that would allow small energy users to sign up to agree to reduce their energy usage during high demand hours on the network.

Although this new bill has been cited in the news recently, it has a long way to go before becoming law. The bill has not yet passed the Ohio House or Senate and will have to gain support in both chambers to ultimately pass. If the bill passes, utilities will then need to develop the program for their network area and seek approval from the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio before rolling it out to customers. 9/11/2025