The utility watchdog Energy and Policy Institute highlights a bill introduced last week in Virginia that would prohibit the utilities Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power from charging customers for their political activities. 

The bill, HB 792, would bar Virginia’s investor-owned electric utilities from charging their customers for their dues to trade associations, lobbying government officials, advertising, and other efforts to influence public opinion, charitable giving, and litigation to challenge regulations or laws. Current law in Virginia only bans utilities from recovering the costs of advertising.

Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power would still be able to conduct all of those activities, but they would have to fund them from money they would otherwise return to investors as profit, rather than baking them into customers’ monthly bills.

The bill also would require the utilities to file reports annually to allow regulators and the public to ensure that they are following the law, and would apply financial penalties to any utilities who break the new rules. 

The Energy Choice Coalition hosted a webinar on Wednesday on the consumer benefits of competition in electricity markets. The discussion is based around a recent R Street Institute paper, Electric Paradigms: Competitive Structures Benefit Consumers, and its recommendations for states to pursue market reforms that increase competition at all levels of electricity markets. Panelists included R Street Institute scholar Michael Giberson, Sunnova’s Meghan Nutting, Northwestern University’s Institute for Regulatory Law & Economics Director Lynne Kiesling, and ECC Director Robert Dillon.

A federal grand jury on Monday indicted the former chair of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio on 11 counts related to bribery and embezzlement.

The indictment claims Sam Randazzo accepted a $4.3 million bribe in exchange for helping FirstEnergy pass House Bill 6, the 2019 energy law at the center of a wide-ranging federal bribery probe that has already resulted in former speaker of the Ohio House Larry Householder serving a 20-year prison sentence. Householder was convicted in March 2023 by a federal jury of racketeering conspiracy.

House Bill 6 charged Ohio electricity customers a fee to bail out two nuclear plants owned by the FirstEnergy and slashed incentives for renewables and energy efficiency. Ratepayers continue to subsidize a pair of coal plants owned by FirstEnergy and several other utilities because of House Bill 6, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

The watchdog organization the Checks & Balances Project has requested the identities of the Ohio Public Utilities Commission staff members who recommended issuing the protective order that declared publicly available information to be trade secrets in the audit conducted into the details of Ohio’s HB6 law.

The redaction included the identity of the company auditors accused of “overcharging” the Ohio Valley Electric Corp.’s Clifty Creek power plant for coal and other financial information about the utility – details are publicly available in filings to the U.S. Energy Information Administration and on the utility’s website.

The PUCO’s request for the protective order said the “financial information contained in the Audit Reports that is highly sensitive in nature.”

The Energy and Policy Institute recently published the following report detailing how utility campaign giving nears $500K as Michigan lawmakers weigh energy bills.

Michigan utility giants DTE Energy and Consumers Energy have given state lawmakers nearly half a million dollars in campaign contributions this year, according to new state disclosures that come amid worries that the same legislators will weaken key bills to accelerate the transition to clean energy to appease the utilities. 

Political action committees (or PACs) tied to DTE and Consumers have channeled a total of $479,450 to campaign accounts tied to legislators, Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and broader party funds between January 1 and October 20. The filings, released this week, show funds affiliated with 119 of 148 state legislators – 80% of the body – have taken utility money this year. House and Senate energy committee members and chairs are notable beneficiaries, including some who promised to usher in a new era of utility accountability after widespread power outages earlier this year. 

The Institute For Self-Reliance (ILSR) has launched a Community Solar Tracker on its website to follow the expansion of rooftop solar beyond individual homeowners. ILSR tracks community solar capacity in states with formal programs that allow non-utility ownership. Through community solar, individuals subscribe to a portion of a nearby solar garden and get credits on their energy bill for the electricity it produces. This way, people without the financial means for solar on their rooftops and people who don’t own suitable rooftops can still reap the benefits of renewable energy. ILSR’s website includes toolkits and other interactive material to empower local residents who want to bring community solar to their area.

The Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC) is out with a new report on the use of “group studies” to streamline the interconnection of distributed energy resources (DERs) to the electric distribution grid. 

The report, Thinking Outside the Lines: Group Studies in the Distribution Interconnection Process, aims to help regulators, utilities, and clean energy stakeholders evaluate whether group studies may be an effective avenue for addressing interconnection issues.

As an increasing number of DER projects seek to interconnect to the grid, the interconnection process has slowed in many states. It is not uncommon for DER projects to spend years waiting in a queue to be studied. Fewer than 25% of solar and wind projects successfully get through the interconnection bottleneck. Those that do face rising costs, some almost 400% higher than previous years.

The Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) voted this month to explore possible changes to the compensation rate paid to future rooftop solar customers. The three-to-two vote to reconsider utility buyback rates could make rooftop solar less economical and accessible for many Arizonans. 

The state’s compensation rates for homeowners who sell excess electricity from solar rooftops to their utility are already below the average wholesale price.

The ACC heard five hours of public comment on the question of whether to reconsider utility buyback rates with testimony from a broad coalition of businesses, employees, ratepayers, realtors, owners of rooftop solar and other stakeholders who said the commission was hostile to solar energy and would rather see Arizonans remain dependent on coal and natural gas.

Former FERC Chairmen Jon Wellinghoff and Pat Wood write that competitive market systems have proven more effective at driving cost-effective decarbonization than single-utility markets, all while fostering reliability and long-term planning. The op-ed originally appeared in Utility Drive on Sept. 15.

Experts believe that this summer has been the hottest ever recorded on Earth. At the same time that severe weather events are wreaking havoc on our power systems, U.S. energy costs rose two times faster than inflation in 2022. These trendlines are alarming and rightfully capture our attention. Also alarming? The sentiment among some of our nation’s federal electricity regulators that we should move away from open, competitive markets toward monopoly-dominated structures. In the face of pressing cost, climate and grid reliability challenges, this shift would have massive negative consequences for all Americans.

The Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) will vote Wednesday, October 11, to reconsider its Value of Solar decision and determine whether homeowners and businesses with rooftop solar should be paid less for the power they send back to the grid. The ACC is also considering removing the grandfather protections for customers who already have rooftop solar.

Changing compensation for customers who generate electricity and sell excess power to the grid would destroy the investment expectations of the roughly 270,000 Arizona homeowners who installed rooftop solar systems in the past.  

“After years of fighting about solar, no state has ever torpedoed solar owners’ investment backed expectations by refusing to grandfather them on the export rates the government promised to them when they made their solar investments. Tomorrow AZ will consider being the first,” Court Rich, an attorney representing solar companies, posted on social media.

The Energy and Policy Institute published a detailed account this week of Maryland utilities’ abusing their ratepayers' funds to pay for political activities.

Maryland utilities Baltimore Gas and Electric (BGE) and Washington Gas wielded their influence over county officials in recent months in an attempt to halt the implementation of  local electrification policies requiring all-electric buildings in new development.

In Howard County, records highlight BGE’s involvement in providing testimony and talking points for county council members for Council Bill 5, which recommends changes to county building codes to implement all-electric buildings. 

San Diego public radio station KPBS reports on the Center for Biological Diversity, the Environmental Working Group, and the Protect Our Communities Foundation are challenging the California Public Utility Commission’s adoption of the new rules harming rooftop solar adoption and have asked California’s 1st District Court of Appeal in San Francisco to hold a hearing.

The three groups are challenging the CPUC’s decision to cut the value of electricity generated from solar panels and install $15 monthly fees for residents who add solar panels to their rooftops.

The CPUC voted last December to approve rules which took effect in April.

The Energy and Policy Institute reports Ohio lawmakers have introduced a bill that would make it illegal for utilities to charge their customers for political activities.

The bill would introduce new transparency requirements to prevent utilities from secretly spending ratepayers’ funds on politics. The proposal comes after a wide-ranging bribery scandal that saw FirstEnergy spend $60 million in dark money and led to the conviction of the state’s speaker of the House earlier this year. 

Senate Bill 149 is the latest in a growing trend of efforts around the country to protect customers from footing the bill for their utilities’ political influence activities. Like the Ohio bill, Colorado, Connecticut, and Maine all passed laws this year which prohibit utilities from charging customers for lobbying, trade association memberships, charitable contributions, advertising, and campaign contributions.

Investor-owned utilities have been at the forefront of numerous political scandals and ecological disasters. There is an alternative.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans get their electricity from for-profit corporations granted a monopoly over electricity distribution. In theory, state regulation protects those consumers from the excesses of these private companies. In practice, weak laws, poor oversight, and the swelling power of consolidation allow state-sponsored utility monopolies to cut corners and choke off competition in order to maximize profits.

This behavior has made us more vulnerable to the consequences of climate change, through power outages, wildfires, and other calamities. At the same time, monopoly utilities have been a persistent obstacle to the clean-energy transition that we urgently need to stop climate change from getting worse.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has released a proposed decision that would undermine the value of rooftop solar for renters in multifamily housing, farms and schools if enacted. The proposal poses a serious threat to California’s climate and energy equity pledges and risks putting solar power out of reach for the state’s nearly 17 million renters.

The proposed rule would establish limits on how much electricity produced by rooftop solar systems can be used at multi-meter properties. The policy effectively forces customers to sell solar-generated electricity to the local investor-owned utility and then makes them buy it back at higher rates.

The Washington Post summarizes recent moves by state legislators to crack down on Big Utility corruption and increase transparency and protection for consumers by prohibiting utilities from charging ratepayers for political activities. Excerpts from The Washington Post:

Utilities across the country use money collected from customers’ monthly bills to fund their political activities, including lobbying, advertisements and trade association membership dues.

That’s about to change in three states — Colorado, Connecticut and Maine — that recently passed laws to prohibit this practice.

Proponents of the measures, which garnered bipartisan support, say they will prevent customers from footing the bill for political activities they might oppose, including lobbying against climate policies. They acknowledge the measures probably won’t save individual consumers much money, but say they’re important transparency steps.

Heatmap correspondent Matthew Zeitlin checked in with Josh Rhodes at the University of Texas about the positive role wind and solar power are playing on the Texas grid in the latest heat wave after electricity prices recently spiked at over $4,400 per megawatt hour.

The past few days have shown that, at least so far, Texas’s deregulated, renewable-and-gas heavy electric grid can stand up to the extreme summer heat.

Late Thursday afternoon, wind and solar were providing 40 percent of the power on operator ERCOT’s grid — around 30,000 megawatts, about even with the amount of power coming from natural gas. At the same time, prices in Texas stayed relatively low. This impressive production from solar and wind comes amid a heat wave that, earlier this week, caused record-breaking demand on the Texas grid. While Texas has a unique combination of systemic electricity reliability issues and high renewables usage, the question of if and how renewables can shoulder the load of spiking electricity demand is one being asked across the country as the grid begins to decarbonize.

AUSTIN, TX — Addressing the life-threatening heat dome that has settled over Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) announced Thursday that a backup prayer system had been added to the state electricity grid. “To prevent the deadly outages we’ve experienced over the last few years, these new reserves will kick in to supply affected residents with prayers to our Lord and Savior,” said Abbott, adding that as soon as the power grid failed, God would be called upon to provide electricity to the millions of homes that have lost power. “The dozens of regional prayer circles we have set up will kneel and immediately begin to mitigate the strain on our current inefficient electrical system. Residents can rest assured that as soon as a blackout occurs, our new system will ask our Heavenly Father to return power so that no one dies of heat stroke.” At press time, several Texans were shocked to discover that they had already been charged tens of thousands of dollars for backup prayer usage.