COLERAIN TOWNSHIP, Ohio — If you have sticker shock from your energy bill this month, you’re not alone.
Eron Smith said he couldn’t tell WCPO 9 News his vulgar reaction after opening his $450 energy bill this month.
“My electric bill is higher than my car payment,” he said.
Dynegy supplies his electricity, which is delivered through Duke Energy.
For a Duke Energy Ohio customer, the company said a September bill for a typical Ohio customer using 1,000 kwH is $169.54 this year, an increase from $123.84 in September 2022.
“Duke Energy Ohio bills are roughly $35 higher because of retail generation supply cost, $4 base rates and $7 on PUCO-approved riders,” corporate communications manager Sally Thelen wrote in an email.
Rising energy prices are the result of a variety of factors. Because utility companies in Ohio don’t generate their own electricity, they must purchase it at an auction. Factors like inflation and the war in Ukraine impacted auctions earlier this year, said Brittany Waugaman with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio.
“It’s really just a combination of factors that go into these auctions,” Waugaman said. “The market price itself has gone up.”
Jim Mathers is president of Energy Professionals, an energy consulting firm for businesses. As someone who helps businesses find ways to get better pricing on their electricity, he said he hasn’t seen price increases like these in 15 years.
“There’s additional costs for generation, especially when right now we still have an older grid,” Mathers said.
Increasing demand also plays a factor in rising prices, he said: “The utilities and the Public Utility Commission always have to factor in worst-case scenarios, and when people use the maximum electricity at the same time is when we have real problems.”
“There happens to be annual ups and downs, and we’re kind of going back into another long-term increase, it looks like to our analyst,” said Mathers.
There are tools to help consumers find other options, Waugaman with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio said. Using their apples-to-apples comparison tool, you can compare rates and terms of your current energy supplier with other providers.
“There’s a lot of different options out there, and that’s what this tool is deigned to help [with],” Waugaman said.
Some customers, such as Smith in Colerain Township, live in communities that have a government aggregation agreement.
Smith is just wondering what’s next for his rising energy bills: “when’s it going to stop? Or is it going to go back down?”
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