Duke Energy Ohio To Rely Exclusively On 36-Month Contracts For Default Service Under One Year Of Its New Proposed Default Service Plan?

Duke Energy Ohio has filed with PUCO a proposed electric security plan that includes a proposal for procuring default service supply for the period June 1, 2018 to May 31, 2024

Duke Energy Ohio would continue to use a competitive bid plan relying on a descending clock auction obtaining laddered, full requirements, load following slice-of-system products to serve SSO load. Full requirements service consists of energy, capacity, ancillary services, and market-based firm transmission services. It does not include renewable energy compliance

Duke Energy Ohio said in its application that a proposed auction schedule and mix of product term lengths for SSO service was included in Attachment B.

However, Attachment B contains what is described in a footer as two "options" for the auction schedule and product term length mix. While Duke's filing was voluminous, a review did not reveal that Duke Energy Ohio specifically expressed a preference for either option

Both options generally include a mix of 12, 24, and 36-month contracts over the life of the ESP. However, one of the options would include a product mix under which the delivery year June 1, 2021 to May 31, 2022 would be exclusively served under three-year contacts (procured over a laddered three year period). The other option has more variety in product mix, though it does have one delivery year with no 12-month contracts, and one delivery year (the final year) with no 36-month contracts.

See both options for the product mix here (pages 58-59)

Percentage of Income Payment Plan (PIPP) load would be served by a retail supplier selected via a competitive RFP for a one-year term prior to each delivery year.

Duke Energy Ohio proposes to continue to recover generation supply costs via the existing Rider RE (Energy), Rider RC (Capacity), Rider AER-R (Alternative Energy Recovery Rider) and Rider SCR (Supplier Cost Reconciliation)

Notably, Duke Energy Ohio proposes to use the (generally) bypassable Rider SCR to recover payments made to excess generation purchased from net metering customers. Duke noted that such generation offsets the load obligation of SSO suppliers, and therefore recovery of these costs should be bypassable. Rider SCR is bypassable subject to a 10% circuit breaker provision, under which unrecovered costs exceeding a 10% threshold allow, contingent on PUCO approval, the rider to become nonbypassable.

Costs of conducting the auction for a PIPP supplier would be recovered via nonbypassable rider.