The coal-fired power plants owned by Ohio Valley Electric Corp. (OVEC) were losing between $150,000 to $175,000 a day in April 2020, according to emails between officials of Duke Energy, one of the utilities that owns part of OVEC. John Swez, Duke’s director of generation dispatch, said Duke should propose to the OVEC board that… Read more »
Two of the utility companies that own the Ohio Valley Electric Corp. (OVEC) want to keep the public from learning about how OVEC’s two money-losing coal plants are allowed to operate at will and send expensive electricity to the grid because of Ohio’s scandal-plagued HB 6 law. Ohio Power, also known as AEP Ohio, and… Read more »
Ohio consumer advocates and major utility customers want the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio to disclose more information from the audit into the effects of Ohio’s scandal-plagued HB 6 law. The Ohio Consumers’ Counsel and major consumers, including grocery giant Kroger, filed motions with PUCO this week seeking the end to the protective order granted… Read more »
One of the owners of the Ohio Valley Electric Corp. (OVEC), whose coal-fired power plants were bailed out by Ohio’s scandal-plagued HB 6 law, agreed to disclose details in a public audit that the company had previously claimed were trade secrets. In a series of articles over the last two months, Checks & Balances Project… Read more »
The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio acknowledged Friday what Checks & Balances Project has reported over the last few weeks: Much of the information redacted from an audit into the effects of Ohio’s HB 6 law no longer deserves protection. The ruling by PUCO Attorney Examiner Megan Addison concluded ““that it appears certain information contained… Read more »
Still-unnamed staff members of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio accepted utilities’ vague claims of trade secrecy when they recommended hiding information from the public audit of the state’s HB 6 law even though the utilities themselves had already made much of the data public. In December 2021, three utility companies sought a protective order… Read more »
Checks & Balances Project filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) Thursday, seeking the names and deliberations of staff members who recommended granting the protective order that hid key details from the audit into the effects of Ohio’s HB 6 law. The protective order granted July 7… Read more »
The Boich Companies filed Ohio forms claiming they conducted no lobbying from 2017 through 2019, even though court records show their officials were intimately involved in the passage of HB 6, the law requiring state ratepayers to bail out two coal-fired power plants. Boich’s lobbying reports are another facet of the company’s stealth campaign to… Read more »
Many of the activities of the Boich Companies, owners of coal supplier Resource Fuels, are included in the 2021 federal deferred prosecution agreement signed by FirstEnergy, the Akron-based utility that admitted bribing its way to the passage of HB 6, the 2019 law that bailed out power plants tied to the company. The deferred prosecution… Read more »
Sam Randazzo, the former chair of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, was charged in an 11-count indictment for his involvement in the passage of the HB 6 that bailed out money-losing nuclear- and coal-fueled power plants and gutted Ohio’s renewable energy mandate. Randazzo, the PUCO chair from April 2019 until his resignation in November… Read more »
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