The energy efficiency programs behind the Ohio utilities FirstEnergy and AEP are going away January 1, 2021 due in great part to the passing of House Bill 6, often referred to as the “First Energy Solutions Nuclear Plant Bailout”. As a result of the State of Ohio Legislature’s passing of HB 6, Ohio’s businesses with kwh usage greater than 700,000 kwh/year can choose to opt out of paying the for the Energy Efficiency and Peak Demand Program rider (EE/PDR) charged by the utility for the remaining months of 2020. Businesses of this size are labeled “Mercantile” accounts by Ohio’s publicly traded electric utilities. Again, rebate programs by Ohio’s utilities paid to Mercantile customers for energy efficiency projects large and small are ceasing at the end of 2020. Actually, due to the number of rebate requests currently in the queue or soon to be put into the queue, many in the industry believe the rebate queue will be full by June. Beginning January 2021 all of Ohio’s electric consumers behind all the publicly traded utilities will begin paying a new rider on their distribution invoices to pay for the bailout of the First Energy Solutions’, now known as Energy Harbor, nuclear power plant that was operating at a loss and needed additional subsidies over and above than the ones received by the electric transmission grid owner PJM to keep operational. As part of HB6 Energy Efficiency rebate programs of each utility will end at the end of 2020.
If you are a Mercantile business behind one of the major publicly traded utilities in Ohio like American Electric Power or First Energy, and you don’t have any energy efficiency projects planned for 2020 whereby you plan to request rebate funds, you may want to consider opting out of the EE/PDR Rider for the remaining months of 2020 and save on your electric utility distribution costs. As a Mercantile account, if you opt out you could potentially save your company a few thousand dollars over the remaining months of in 2020. For example, an RD Energy client that consumes about 9,000,000 kwhs/year behind First Energy that can Opt-Out of the rider from April 2020 – December 2020 can lower their electric spend by about $15,000 by reducing their utility distribution charges. As you can imagine, it was an easy decision. The exact amount your Mercantile business can avoid paying will depend on how many kwhs your business consumes along with your KW demand volume. If you have no pending projects in the remaining months of 2020, why pay into a program that will not exist at the end of 2020?
One important reminder. If your company opts out of paying the EE/PDR Rider for the remaining months of 2020, then your company forfeits any energy efficiency rebates for the year 2020. There have been no announced utility energy efficiency rebate program for either utility in 2021 that we’re aware at this time. Of course some type of program could be announced in the future. If you don’t already have a project in the works that you can submit to the utility to get placed in queue sometime in the 2nd quarter of 2020, you probably will be too late to get any 2020 rebates dollars.
If you have interest knowing more about in opting out of the AEP or First Energy EE/PDR rider for the rest of 2020 or more about our total Mercantile customer buying strategy, contact RD Energy to learn more. Meetings can be set up via phone or on site. As an Ohio based energy broker RD Energy has spent the past 15 years getting ready for serving you with the best and complete energy buying strategy!
One major part of our RD Energy corporate client business strategy is to educate and inform. Why not give Ohio’s Mercantile businesses the opportunity to decide if Opting Out of paying the EE/PDR rider for the remaining months of 2020 for themselves? Our overall strategy includes educating our clients, watching the wholesale markets for new supply buying opportunities, shopping for our customers with a portfolio of electric and natural gas suppliers that contains the biggest deregulated suppliers in the state of Ohio and from around the U.S and exploring for our clients PJM programs like Peak Load Management and Demand Response programs that can dramatically reduce the customer’s electric spend and earn them income checks from PJM. Plus, we make it part of our mission to respond to client questions the same day or within 24 hours. Over our 15 years of being in business RD Energy has evolved into a electric and natural gas broker that is unique in the industry. RD Energy’s knowledge and experience is rarely matched. Our honesty and integrity is never matched.