Aggregation of Electricity

In researching electric aggregation for villages such as Glendale, Ohio, I concluded that a human doesn't have the time to check on Duke's filings with the Ohio Public Utilities Commission and their plans for making and selling and pricing power over the next two years. This would be necessary to compare Dominion's fixed price offer with Duke Energy's current rates plus projected changes to their FPP (see earlier blog). Turns out that Duke got an Ohio Supreme Court ruling that such info is a trade secret! But I'm still going with Dominion because I "feel" it will be cheaper for a couple of years. Goodbye regulation, hello gambling.

(Didn't Madoff ((justifiably)) say that his methods were trade secrets?)

Now the language from the PUCO order, or at least an Order which routinely now declares "trade secret" on the information that a well-informed residential customer needs to know when deciding whether to switch to a competitive supplier:


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(5) On May 15, 2009, Duke filed a motion for a protective order, regarding the audit report. According to Duke, this report includes trade secret information. [*3] Specifically, the audit report contains a description of Duke's fuel procurement strategy, emission allowance strategy, coal contract information, purchased power information, generation information, and general business strategy. The confidential information in the report, Duke asserts, if publicly disclosed, would give its competitors access to competitively sensitive, confidential information which could allow the competitors to make offers to sell coal, etc., at higher prices than the competitors might offer in the absence of that information and to the detriment of Duke and its customers. Further, Duke contends, disclosure of this information would enable competitors in the wholesale power market to ascertain the manner in which Duke plans, manages, and operates its generating facilities, the fuel purchasing strategy, the purchased power strategy, the emission allowance strategy, and the costs associated therewith, and would enable them to ascertain Duke's positions with respect to electric generation capabilities. Further, Duke claims, this information would provide power marketing competitors with knowledge that would allow them to manipulate the market place so as to cause [*4] consumers to pay more for electricity than they otherwise would. Finally, Duke reasons that Duke would be placed at a competitive disadvantage in negotiations for fuel contracts, allowing competitors to adjust their prices, either to win contracts or to set prices artificially higher to take advantage of an overall short market, forcing consumers to pay higher prices for power. Duke confirms that this information is not known outside of Duke and is not disseminated within Duke except to those employees with a legitimate business need to know and act upon the information.2009 Ohio PUC LEXIS 479, 3-4 (Ohio PUC 2009)