COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) – AEP Ohio has responded to a grassroots effort to encourage Central Ohioans to speak out against a proposed rate increase. Columbus StandUp launched ‘Lights Out on AEP’ Monday this week in opposition of the base rate increase of 2.14% AEP Ohio has applied for.
The energy giant responded to a request for comment but did not provide a representative for an interview. The statement reads in full:
“AEP Ohio customers’ bills are made up of three parts: generation, transmission and distribution. Ohioans are seeing increased energy costs for two primary reasons: generation costs and transmission costs. Generation costs are those that cover electricity generation to meet a person’s energy needs—the power plants, wind farms and other generation sources that provide electricity to the system. Transmission costs are the costs of building and maintaining high-voltage lines that move energy over large distances, from generation sources to communities. Simply, there is not enough electricity being generated in Ohio to meet our state’s electricity needs, creating an imbalance in the supply of energy and the demand for it. That imbalance is now forcing Ohio to import electricity from other states through high-voltage transmission lines. As generation supply has decreased, both generation and transmission costs have increased. AEP Ohio shares our customers’ concerns about the imbalance between the supply of energy and demand for it, and we are frustrated, too. In Ohio, utilities like AEP Ohio are legally prohibited from building new generation sources. We sincerely hope the market will respond soon with additional generation sources in Ohio to help alleviate this burden for our customers…