This week, Reps. David Thomas and Tristan Rader introduced the bipartisan Ohio Power Outage Relief Act, which would require electric distribution utilities to provide bill credits and reimburse customers for certain losses tied to qualifying prolonged or repeated outages.

The bill arrives as Ohio customers continue to face concerns about both electric reliability and affordability.

“Ohio customers should not have to choose between reliable power and affordable power,” said Lindsey Short, Ohio Manufacturers’ Association (OMA) managing director of advocacy and energy services. “Utilities should be accountable for the service they provide, and any reliability solution should be judged by whether it actually improves the system without simply pushing more costs onto customers.”

OMA continues to push for greater scrutiny of utility load forecasts, stronger oversight of transmission spending and protections against shifting the costs of new large loads onto existing customers, all with the goal of improving reliability without piling more costs onto Ohio businesses and families. 9/23/2026