Duke Energy Ohio Reduces Monthly Electric Bills

Duke Energy Ohio has reduced its residential power bills by about 4.5 percent, the utility announced on June 14. The utility, which provides regulated transmission and distribution operations, serves 840,000 electricity customers in its Ohio/Kentucky service area.

As a result, a typical residential customer who uses 1,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity a month will pay about $118  beginning with his or her June invoice. That’s down about $5.55 from May.

“We continue to work hard to provide the best possible price for our customers,” said Jim Henning, president of Duke Energy Ohio. “Our customers’ bills continue to be the lowest in Ohio and well below the national average.”

The driver for the reduction, the utility said, is the price Duke Energy Ohio pays to procure electricity for its customers who haven’t switched to an alternative supplier for their electricity. The company uses a competitive auction process to acquire electricity for these customers. As a whole, recent winning bids have been lower than past bids – leading to lower power bills.

The company makes no profit on the energy supply portion of customers’ bills. The cost of energy supply that Duke Energy Ohio procures is passed on directly to its customers.

Indeed, according to a fall 2015 report issued by the Edison Electric Institute, Duke Energy Ohio has the lowest typical residential monthly bill among all electric utilities statewide – and comes in about $10 less than the national average.