PUCO Staff Recommends NOPEC's Electric Government Aggregator Certificate Be Renewed

Staff of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio have recommended that PUCO approve renewal of the electric governmental aggregation certificate of the Northeast Ohio Public Energy Council (NOPEC)

"Staff finds NOPEC has meet the requirements of Ohio Adm.Code 4901:1-24-10(C) to be certified as a CRES Governmental Aggregator," Staff said

"The facts regarding NOPEC’s decision to return customers to the SSO in September [2022] prior to the end of its Government Aggregation program and just prior to the auctions for the SSO service are concerning. However, Staff cannot conclude that NOPEC's conduct rises to the level required to suspend its certificate under Ohio Adm.Code 4901:1-24-13," Staff said

Staff said that 40,000 customers per month were leaving NOPEC on an individual customer basis by August 2022, and said that SSO auctions likely would have had some degree of negative impact from these, and future, individual customer actions even if NOPEC had not acted to drop the customers itself.

Staff said NOPEC's drop of 550,000 customers was not "expressly authorized" under its plan of operation of governance [POG}, but said that the drop was also not expressly forbidden. Staff noted that parties to the plan of operation of governance (e.g. member communities) do not believe the plan has been violated

"Therefore, Staff cannot conclude that the certificate should be suspended because of a violation of the POG."