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This is not a rerun.

Redistricting is back.

And electricity bills are shocking ratepayers in Ohio.

Well, try to shed some light on that this weekend.

The state of Ohio Welcome to the state of Ohio.

I'm Karen Kasler.

State lawmakers are approaching a deadline for a new congressional district map, which has to be redrawn for next year's election because the map that was approved in 2022 did not have bipartisan support.

That map has resulted in ten Republican and five Democratic members of Congress from Ohio.

Democrats appear to be ready for a fight over whatever supermajority Republicans introduced, which would have to be approved by a 3/5 vote in both the House and the Senate by September 30th.

Including at least half of the legislature's 42 Democrats.

They introduced their own map.

This week, which they said was aimed at creating more competitive districts, with eight leaning Republican and seven tipping toward Democrats.

Danny Isaacson leads the Democratic super minority caucus in the House, and he spoke to my Statehouse news Bureau colleague, Sarah Donaldson.

I wish I was in a situation where I got to drive the train, and I was setting the schedule and making sure that we were following the law, but, you know, that falls to the speaker of the House and the Senate president.

And so we'll look to them to sort of set the agenda and make sure that we are involved, involving the public holding a, you know, the hearings that we're required to hold and hopefully following the law and how we produce congressional districts based on those conversations.

Do you envision a scenario right now where maps get bipartisan votes?

I'm not going to engage in sort of the hypotheticals there.

We are focused on fighting for what people deserve, which is why we introduced a map that would produce fairer districts that represent the will of the voters and the makeup of the state.

Tell me a little bit more about those maps that you introduced.

So the maps that we introduced in an even year where you know, there's no one party having a wave election would likely produce eight Republicans and seven Democrats.

And in a state that has over the last ten years, averaged about 55 to 45.

Republican, Democrat.

That is what we should have in terms of our congressional delegation.

But the maps also have competitive districts, which is what voters should have in a democracy.

You should get to choose, and there will be some years where, you know, the party that's in power is unpopular, and they'll lose some seats and they'll be some years where the reverse happens.

And we should have maps that provide for that possibility and give voters a real voice.

And that's what the maps that we proposed would do.

The current lines are ten Republicans, five Democrats.

I think maybe the GOP at one time envision those being 12 three maps.

You've heard a lot about 12 three maps from the GOP.

But they did also produce a couple competitive races.

Marcy Kaptur is race.

Amelia Sykes is race.

Would you be okay with the current line staying in place or a slight variation of them?

Again, I'm not going to engage in sort of hypotheticals about what the Republicans might or might not introduce as potential maps.

But I will say that our members of Congress have proven over and over again that even against long odds, they're able to win.

I mean, what Congresswoman Kaptur has delivered for her district for decades clearly holds water with the people of Ohio, and that she keeps winning in districts that they think they draw her out of.

And so I imagine that both, you know, all of our members of Congress, because they are such effective leaders and public servants for their communities, would be competitive in in their districts and hopefully in they would be competitive in districts that are fairly drawn.

There was there were a lot of eyes on Texas when Texas Democrats, legislative Democrats, you know, left the state for as much as two weeks, I believe, and kind of held up business in Texas.

I know that's not necessarily a possibility in Ohio, just with the numbers that you guys have and how the legislature works.

But, you've introduced your own maps, like, what else is in the playbook that you can tell us about that you guys are going to be using as you prepare to go through legislative redistricting?

Look, here's how we think about it.

And this applies to more than just redistricting.

But 12 million people in this state is too many people for us to give up on their basic rights to a fair democracy.

And so we are going to keep fighting for what people deserve, which is congressional representation that accurately and fairly represents the state of Ohio, because when we don't have it, we get what we've seen with the big ugly bill, which is that because of gerrymandering here in Ohio, President Trump and Republicans in D.C. cut off access to Medicaid for millions of people around the country, are causing millions to lose health insurance.

And access to hospitals as they close in their communities.

More children will be hungry this winter and in schools because they lack access to school meals because of gerrymandering.

Here in Ohio, if we had fair districts, if we had the map that we are proposing, that bill would not have passed, people would still have their health insurance.

Those hospitals would not be at risk of closing.

And so that's what's at stake with how fair or not fair our congressional maps are.

Ohio Democratic Chair Kathleen Clyde says Democrats are looking at different avenues to fight, obviously at the state House in court, potentially at the ballot box, potentially.

What sort of conversations have you had with the party about, you know, your caucus and also the Senate Caucus's role?

Obviously, everything is on the table.

If the maps are not drawn fairly in a bipartisan way, whether that's a referendum, whether that's a ballot initiative to change the, you know, to look to a constitutional amendment.

Certainly, you know, I think voters will remember if congressional districts are rigged, against their interests next November.

And so we are going to be very active.

But for the moment, we've introduced a fair bipartisan map, and that's what we're going to be pushing for.

Republican legislative leaders are not commenting on the Democrats map and have not released their own.

But as they did in 2021 and 2023, lawmakers have again opened up a website for citizens to submit maps at redistricting dot legislature.ohio.gov.

If state lawmakers don't pass a map by the end of this month, the seven member Ohio Redistricting Commission has until October 31st to approve one.

But both Democratic members on that panel must approve it.

If that fails, the process goes back to state lawmakers who have until November 30th to pass a map with a simple majority vote.

there's been a lot of attention on soaring property tax bills.

But another thing that's squeezing Ohioans and people across the country is utility bills.

Electricity costs are up 2.7% nationally over the year ending in July, but they've jumped 10 to 15% for many Ohio households.

The reasons go back to 1999, when state lawmakers deregulated the electricity market and a 2008 bill that changed the regulatory structure at the Public Utilities Commission.

Those things were supposed to bring lower prices and innovation because of competition.

Ohio State University Associate Professor of Public Policy Noah Dorman has researched this, finding that fewer bidders are showing up to compete at retail auctions that set the price of electricity generation for consumers, and that drives power costs up.

consumers and ratepayers see auction prices that are set at the retail level and auction prices that are set at the horse at the wholesale level.

The wholesale level is really when your utility company goes out to the larger market, where part of PJM is market, a 13 state interconnected market, it goes all the way from Chicago down to DC.

And that market is set, has its prices set by auctions for a variety of markets.

That's when you're first at your your company, your utility company like First Energy AEP.

They go and buy the electricity on your behalf and then they retail it to you, then auctions are used to set the retail price.

The markup that charges that, that determines how much how we're charges as residential consumers.

And there was a recent in July auction that said, I think it was like the second highest price that we've seen in this.

So things that these auctions have not delivered lower prices.

Again, there are two sets of auctions here, but they've not delivered those lower prices.

Yeah.

So those are the capacity auctions.

And those are the most contentious lately because those deal with large demand forecasts associated with things like data centers and AI and, those markets, the capacity markets.

Two years ago, we saw prices about $28 per megawatt day, which is the unit jump to $269 and then to $329 just recently, this past summer.

So we saw the prices clear at the price cap, the highest possible permissible price, that you can, that that's allowable on these markets.

And so consumers are really seeing a sticker shock in the generation portion of their electricity bill as a result of these high prices and those capacity auctions.

You said $26 to, what, $28, 28 to 3?

29?

In short, I'm not good at math, but that's an enormous increase in a very short period.

It sure is.

Yeah, it sure is.

A lot of factors at play that explain that, they changed what counts as de rating or how they de-escalate the value of a power plant if it's an intermittent resource or not.

They took, some load forecasts.

There's some controversy about how they address load growth from things like data centers and AI.

So there's both supply side and demand side shocks that contributed to that, to that price cap or to that price increase up to the price cap.

But the short and long of it is that consumers are seeing a significant price increase because of that capacity, market increase.

And Ohio has brought in several data centers and other high tech facilities like this.

The state has really gone after some of those.

They sure have.

And, that has resulted in forecasts that show a real increase in demand, especially in the central Ohio area.

So this is a setup that could get worse over time.

That's right.

Yeah.

That's right.

So most of the data centers that are projected are here in central Ohio.

AEP is, forecasting a 50% load growth by 2030.

So in the next five years, we're seeing a 50% increase in load if AP's forecasts are accurate.

The concern that I have about those load forecasts is that, the, you know, the Chips act is in question.

Many of the, the subsidies that would bring in those data centers and those chip manufacturers, are in question or are, you know, we're not sure.

And many of the contracts for that additional load, have resulted in, kind of a tenuous demand.

We don't know if those data centers are going to come here.

We don't know if those data centers are going to open.

They're forecasted and projected.

But as I understand it, the contracts have not yet been been signed.

What that means is that the projected load from those data centers is factoring into our prices today, but unfortunately, we don't know if that low is actually going to be realized.

So consumers are paying for that projected load growth.

Consumers are paying for all of the infrastructure that has to go in place to be prepared for that massive increase in data centers.

But the data centers are not yet here.

And so the question is, are consumers seeing sticker shock because of data centers and AI that has not yet come?

And the answer is absolutely yes.

One of the other things that factors into this is the supply side, where you've got the retirements of several coal fired or fossil fuel burning plants, and they haven't been replaced with anything else.

Right?

That's correct.

So we've had a lot of retirements, and the way it works, in our wholesale market, our wholesale market, as I mentioned, PJM is responsible for reliability of our of our network, of our of our generation resources.

And they have an interconnection queue.

It's basically a line for new power plants to jump on.

And, and produce electricity on our network.

And that interconnection queue has a big backlog.

They face stiff criticism from a variety of stakeholders in these markets for their delay in getting new power plants online.

Another downside here on the supply side is that, much of the the resources that have been retiring are baseload resources.

Those are coal resources that are stable, reliable, low price resources.

And they're being replaced with intermittent resources.

A lot of coal, excuse me, a lot of, solar and a lot of wind.

And as a result of that, we're seeing intermittent resources that are unstable with fluctuating prices replacing stable baseload resources.

So consumers are seeing price increases do not only to, demand side issues, but also supply side issues as well.

What would happen if Ohio left PJM?

This is that 13 state regional consortium that you're talking about here.

House Speaker Matt Hoffman has suggested that there are talks that could result in that.

What would happen if Ohio left PJM?

Yeah.

And Pennsylvania Governor Shapiro said, you know, some of the same things.

The idea would be for us to move to the Midwest ISO market.

It's like PJM, but it's part of the Midwest region.

And that remains to be seen.

The amount of research that would need to be done to move a large state, a large manufacturing state like Ohio, into the Midwest, ISO would be tremendous.

If we decided to do that, it would take at least a decade, I think, for us to be able to even implement a policy like that, that would be just a significant undertaking.

So, moving to a big, a big change to move to another, another grid.

Would be significant.

I want to ask you about energy efficiency programs that were eliminated through the nuclear power plant bailout law known as House Bill six.

It, also had subsidies for Ohio's two nuclear power plants, the two coal fired power plants.

Those have been pulled back, but the elimination of those energy efficiency programs remains.

Has that had any effect?

Is there any evidence that a lack of energy efficiency programs has an effect on all of this?

I don't believe so.

No, I think some of the energy efficiency programs, there's because of the high prices, manufacturers in particular face a variety of incentives to implement energy efficiency and peak demand reduction.

And I don't think that the removal of some of those, programs has, really moved the needle much.

I think the biggest movement in the needle really are the dramatic changes that we're seeing in the wholesale market and the dramatic changes that we're seeing with, how the regulated system prices retail electricity in the state.

And of course, consumers who are looking at higher energy bills are going, okay, all that's great, but what do I what can I do?

And quite often people are told to shop around, look at the apples to apples to apples comparison site and that will help you lower your bill.

But you found that that's not necessarily the case.

Well, so that's right.

So, through our research, group at Ohio State, the Energy Markets and Policy group, we did a very large study.

We went back ten years and we looked at every daily retail choice offer filed by every major competitive retail electric service supplier across the state.

And we compared those rates both to each other and, to the standard service offer the, the price that consumers would receive if they didn't shop and they just did nothing and stayed with their utilities default price.

And what we found, interestingly, was that most of those offers historically have been above the standard service offer.

They weren't exactly worth, consumers time in shopping.

Through that study, we've also seen, unfortunately, a lot of gimmicks.

We've seen some really unfortunate things happen to consumers, particularly vulnerable consumers like the elderly.

We had a research subject in Pennsylvania recently, an older woman, she thought she was on a very favorable rate.

We looked at her bill.

We collect her bill at, you know, subjects bills as part of the study.

And we looked at her bill and she was paying an additional $139 per month.

Add her on her electric bill.

We reported it.

They opened up an investigation, and hopefully they're going to get her her money back.

But her case is not, you know, an isolated case.

We're seeing numerous cases of untoward activity in these retail choice markets.

So not only over a ten year period do we see that those retail choice, suppliers are not really pricing electricity very, you know, competitively.

But we're also seeing a lot of gimmick, gimmicks and scams out there among among those craft suppliers.

And even if you go to the website and look carefully, I mean, you'll see multiple offers from the same companies.

But they offer teaser rates, so they offer if you cancel, you have to pay a fee early termination have to really look very carefully at what you're agreeing to.

That's right.

And some of the unfortunate, market behavior that we've seen is that, a lot of those retail suppliers are pricing their electricity, not on the fundamentals of the wholesale market.

They're pricing their electricity based on the standard service offers auction.

Now, the SSL auctions have jumped in recent years.

And in response to some of the wholesale market activity we just discussed, but we're seeing that, even when the wholesale price was actually lower than the standard service offer, and those retail suppliers could have offered a lower price, many of them, statistically speaking, have been offering prices at or above the default price that so price, which tells us that there are some fundamental problems with the way the retail choice market has been operating.

So with all of this said, all this history and with the knowledge that we were hearing from the white House and, Congress about tariffs and bringing a lot of manufacturing back into this country and the, the, the concerns about the supply for power plants.

Is this just going to get worse and worse?

I mean, the pressure is really on ratepayers who've seen their bills go up dramatically.

Yeah.

Well I think the the silver lining of this is House Bill 15 here in Ohio, Senate Bill two, that has, brought about a number of reforms that, in my opinion, are things that were much needed to bring consumers some price relief.

And, you know, Senate Bill two, House Bill 15 does some, some great things.

We've been recommending, for example, that we get rid of that electric security plan process that has existed in Ohio since, since Senate Bill 221.

And that process has allowed those utilities to add a litany of additional riders on our monthly electric bill.

Those riders, those electric security plans, those are, those are gone now.

And so, the utilities have to open up their books and face a base distribution rate case with some regularity.

And that's going to bring a lot of price relief, I hope, for consumers.

The other thing that that, House Bill 15 does is House Bill 15 forces those utility plants to final, excuse me, those utilities to finally sell off their power plants.

You know, we, required the utilities to to get rid of their power plants or divest them back in 1999.

But as a result, of some political processes, the utilities were allowed to create corporate affiliate relationships with their power plants.

They're essentially sold the power plants to companies that they owned.

They sold the power plants to themselves.

And House Bill 15 gets rid of that process.

So it's essentially like first energy and first energy solutions we heard about during the House Bill six.

Exactly right.

Yes.

Exactly right.

And so what that does is it forces those utilities to to sell off their generation resources.

So if those utilities excuse me, if those generation utilities lose money on the wholesale market, if prices go up on the wholesale market or they can't compete in the capacity market, for example, they can no longer turn around to to captive ratepayers, to captive consumers and pass those costs on to us as consumers.

And I think that's a real game changer that's going to offer.

Hopefully it's going to offer some price relief to consumers.

The devil is in the details and how it gets implemented.

Unfortunately.

But, and if history is our guide, there will be some bumps along the way.

But unfortunately or fortunately, I think we're going to see some, some, some price relief for consumers.

With with in response to that, there's a bill that's been reintroduced but changed a little bit that would allow during peak energy use for those who, in this case, opt in to let utility companies lower, their energy usage.

For instance, a hot day, the if you opt in, then your utility company can raise the thermostat so that you are using less energy.

Is that something that would help here, or is that kind of a Band-Aid for a much bigger problem?

You know, I have to say, I've seen analyzes that have gone both ways on these on these peak demand reduction programs, these energy efficiency programs, these smart meter programs.

But I remain, skeptical, and for good reason.

Those programs that charge consumers more for electricity when they need it more has essentially, it allows them to do price discrimination and allows the utilities to charge us more.

Again, when when we need that electricity more.

People generally have, inelastic demand for electricity.

They need it when they need it.

I don't want to turn, families into day traders on a wholesale market.

And I really want to see personally, I want to see prices that are efficient.

And not necessarily programs that penalize or turn people's appliances off when they really need to use them to cook dinner for their children.

And finally, consumers who want to try to reduce their bills other than, you know, turning off your heat or air conditioning or whatever are things like solar panels, a good idea?

Can you join a community coalition that tries to lower bills?

Well, what are some practical things that actually work?

Yeah, well, you know, I have to say I'm very disappointed with, some of the recent media coverage on this where the recommendation for the last decade has been, find energy efficiency in your home, use more efficient light bulb.

That's what the weather is.

Tell us.

And you know what?

You can go only so far with that when rates are jumping, when we see markets going from 20 something dollars per megawatt day to $300 per megawatt day, energy efficiency is only going to go so far, and we need to start having a dialog about what we are going to actually demand from from our legislators, what we're going to demand from our policymakers, from the Public Utilities Commission.

Consumers need to take action, I think, to to see some price relief.

That action is more than energy efficiency in their homes, that unfortunately, that action is actually, is going to require a political engagement.

Though the Public Utilities Commission has been criticized as being too favorable to utilities.

Dermody says he thinks recent puco decisions have been fair, and that it has to walk a tight balance between utilities and consumers.

Because the Puco is a regulatory agency and not a consumer protection organization.

On the conclusion that the Apples to Apples site doesn't really help consumers lower their costs.

Puco spokesman Matt Shilling notes the study did not look at the actual choices consumers made.

He adds that the energy choice for ohio.gov website quote, allows consumers to compare offers from retail energy suppliers and their utilities default rate.

The site also has advice for potential shoppers to help them make an educated decision.

As with any purchase, consumers should take time to fully understand the terms and conditions of the service they are agreeing to, including what happens after the contract term expires.

End quote.

Schilling concludes by noting that the Puco has a call center to help people with questions, concerns and complaints, which is listed on the Apples to Apples site.

And that is it for this week for my colleagues at the Statehouse News Bureau, Ohio Public Media.

Thanks for watching.

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Place 2977 flags to honor the victims of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center.

The Pentagon and United Airlines Flight 93.

Support for the Statehouse News Bureau comes from Medical Mutual, dedicated to the health and well-being of Ohioans, offering health insurance plans, as well as dental, vision and wellness programs to help people achieve their goals and remain healthy.

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The law offices of Porter, right, Morris and Arthur LLP.

Porter Wright is dedicated to bringing inspired legal outcomes to the Ohio business community.

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Porter Wright inspired Every day in Ohio Education Association, representing 120,000 educators who are united in their mission to create the excellent public schools.

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