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Citing a recent Ohio Supreme Court decision concerning the Ohio’s PUC rehearing authority, the FirstEnergy Ohio utilities file to withdraw their electric security plan (ESP V), which governs default service and other matters, that had been approved by PUCO in May 2024. 

Excerpts from the ALJ Entry:

{***} On October 29, 2024, the Companies filed a notice of withdrawal (Notice) of their Application for an ESP. In the Notice, FirstEnergy states that it is exercising its statutory right to withdraw its Application under R.C. 4928.143(C)(2)(a). Citing to R.C. 4928.143(C)(2)(b), FirstEnergy further requests that the Commission issue an order “as necessary to continue the provisions, terms, and conditions of [the Companies’] most recent standard service offer,” i.e., ESP IV.3 

{¶ 12} The administrative law judge finds that any party to this proceeding that wishes to respond to FirstEnergy’s October 29, 2024.

{¶ 14} That any responses to FirstEnergy’s October 29, 2024, Notice must be filed on or before November 13, 2024, and any replies must be filed on or before November 20, 2024. 

As previously reported , the FirstEnergy Ohio EDCs had sought rehearing of certain aspects of PUCO’s order which modified the ESP as filed by the EDCs. Under Ohio law, PUCO must act on rehearing requests within 30 days. PUCO granted rehearing in the ESP V case for the limited purpose of providing additional time to consider the rehearing requests. However, the Ohio Supreme Court recently ruled that PUCO lacks authority to grant such limited rehearing for the purpose of extending the time under which PUCO may substantively address a rehearing request.

PUCO has consistently applied the Ohio Supreme Court’s order to all pending rehearing requests with PUCO, en masse, issuing orders in various proceedings providing that, since PUCO was not authorized to essentially toll its deadline for ruling on rehearing, the rehearing requests were denied by operation of law for those requests which had been pending for more than 30 days.

Additionally, there has been debate among stakeholders as to aggrieved parties’ ability to still seek Ohio Supreme Court review of a PUCO order affected by the en masse rehearing denials. Because of deadlines to seek an Ohio Supreme Court review of a PUCO order, some stakeholders have expressed concern that, due to the passage of time under PUCO’s limited grant of rehearing for further consideration, deeming a rehearing denial as being effective 30 days after the rehearing request was filed, regardless of whether PUCO granted limited rehearing for further consideration, could mean that parties have missed the deadline to seek court review of PUCO’s order. PUCO has said that it is not empowered to address whether any petitions for an Ohio Supreme Court review are timely, as PUCO has said that the Ohio Supreme Court alone addresses such matter.

On rehearing, the FirstEnergy Ohio EDCs sought to reduce the term of ESP V to three years (versus the five years adopted by PUCO, and the eight years originally proposed by the EDCs). 

As reported previously, Phase V eliminated the use of 36-month contracts for default service supply, and the FirstEnergy Ohio EDCs sought to adopt this provision, and to rely solely on 12-month and 24-month SSO contracts, in otherwise reverting to ESP IV.

Also, ESP V included the use of a capacity proxy price for default service auctions in which a PJM base residual auction capacity price is not known, and the FirstEnergy Ohio EDCs propose to maintain this use of the capacity proxy price.

ALJ Ruling  (10/31/2024)
23-301-EL-SSO  (04/05/2023)
In the Matter of the Application of Ohio Edison Company, The Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company and The Toledo Edison Company for Authority to Provide SSO-Standard Service Offer