FirstEnergy Utilities See Bleeding of Residential Customers Back to Default Supply

The FirstEnergy Ohio distribution companies saw a significant decline in migrated residential accounts during the three months ended September 30, 2011, versus the total as of the June 30, 2011.

PUCO has posted updated electric migration statistics as of September 30, 2011, linked below.

Sept. 30 Stats, By Accounts and Volumes

Archived Stats

Matters has also compiled a comparison of accounts migrated as of September 30, 2011 versus June 30, 2011.

Link to Matters' Comparison of Accounts Migrated

What immediately jumps out when reviewing the stats is the cratering of residential migration at the FirstEnergy Ohio utilities. Specifically, each of the FirstEnergy distribution companies saw a net decline of migrated residential accounts as follows from the migration level as of June 30, 2011:

Cleveland Electric Illuminating: (3,662)

Ohio Edison: (4,884)

Toledo Edison: (10,436)

During this period, the percent of migrated residential accounts also decreased, indicating that the loss of competitive supply customers was not solely due to any churn in the overall level of distribution accounts (such as from disconnection, move-out, etc.)

The reality of residential migration at the FirstEnergy utilities -- where only one residential competitive provider was active until three months ago and where the total number of active residential suppliers remains a paltry three -- stands in stark contrast to the stratospheric praise recently heaped on recent settlements at Duke Energy Ohio and the AEP Ohio companies which will essentially copy the FirstEnergy utilities' market structure.

While the Duke Energy Ohio settlement also includes POR, which is not in place at the FirstEnergy companies and should help sustain the Duke Energy Ohio market, the residential migration trends at the FirstEnergy companies (where residential migration would be negligible but for opt-out aggregation) must give serious pause to any expectation that non-aggregation residential migration is going to significantly change as a result of the recent Duke Energy Ohio and AEP Ohio settlements, despite their characterization as, "one of most important
step[s] forward for competitive markets in the past decade." (See 10/27)

Of course, even if residential migration at Duke Energy Ohio or AEP Ohio (starting June 1, 2015 under a pending settlement) is zero, 100% of residential capacity obligations would still be served by the lucrative Reliability Pricing Model, which is perhaps why some quarters of the competitive market community (i.e. those owning generation) were so quick to heap praise on the settlements, notwithstanding their questionable impact on actual customer choice.

Back to the Ohio migration stats, Dayton Power & Light saw significant growth in migration among all customer classes during the quarter ending September 30, 2011, including growth of 21,000 migrated residential accounts versus the June 30, 2011 total.

Duke Energy Ohio saw residential migration increase by nearly 3,000 accounts since June 30, which does represent a slowdown versus the growth of 8,000 migrated residential accounts seen during the second quarter of 2011.