A Bad Day For AEP

. . . is a good day for the rest of us.

"We're AEP.  We can do
whatever we want.  (Snort!)"

AEP, American Electric Power, is my favorite utility . . . to hate.  They have a long, lousy history of lies, greed, pollution, butchery of the landscape, service outages, laziness, and general douchebaggery.  At every turn, AEP demonstrates disdain for the customer.  Their default setting is to always ask us to pay more.  And they're always shocked -- shocked! -- if anyone objects.

Yesterday, AEP had a bad day.  Two separate rulings went against them.

AEP coal barge on the Ohio River

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission blocked a controversial plan allowing AEP to continue operating old, dirty, non-compliant coal-burning power plants while guaranteeing profits to AEP for eight years.  The profit guarantee was to have been achieved by surcharges to customers.  This plan had previously been approved by the all-Republican, politically appointed PUCO.

Smart meter

Then, surprisingly, the normally spineless PUCO got into the act.  The PUCO put a hold on part of AEP's proposal to switch Ohio customer's to so-called "smart meters" which send usage data directly to AEP.  This eliminates the need for meter readers, and should result in lower bills for customers.  Customers could refuse to switch to the new smart meters, but AEP's proposal called for charging the refuseniks a one-time $43 fuck-you fee, then $24 a month thereafter.  But the PUCO found that in smart meter test markets, customers were not seeing any appreciable reduction in their electric bills.  Since the smart meter savings seem to be imaginary, the PUCO will not allow AEP to charge fees to opt-out customers unless they can demonstrate actual, equivalent smart meter savings.

It was a good day, unless you were AEP.