FirstEnergy offers customers range of service options

By Randa Wagner -

When it comes to your house­hold elec­tric ser­vice, you may have more choices and options than you think.

Dan Dev­ille, Area Man­ager for FirstEn­ergy Ser­vice Com­pany, pre­sented the Mor­row County Devel­op­ment Office with a check for $500 from the FirstEn­ergy Foun­da­tion in sup­port of eco­nomic devel­op­ment in Mor­row County. He attended the Feb­ru­ary 6 county com­mis­sion­ers meet­ing to offer insight on any energy con­cerns they might have and acquaint the county with ser­vices FirstEn­ergy offers busi­nesses and consumers.

“There are pro­grams that help reduce elec­tric­ity as well as pro­vide options, finan­cial incen­tives, rebates for both homes and busi­nesses,” he said. “There are things that are free to do, like a home energy ana­lyzer where a cus­tomer can reg­is­ter with their account, then answer a series of ques­tions about their home (i.e. age of home, age of win­dows, etc).”

At the end of the ques­tions, DeV­ille Said, the ana­lyzer pro­duces a ‘report card’ that rec­om­mends areas you could prob­a­bly make invest­ments in that would help reduce your total over­all expense, along with least expen­sive options.

Other incen­tive pro­grams at www.energysave ohio.com include HVAC Incen­tives, CFL Retail Pro­gram, Appli­ance Turn-In Pro­gram, Energy Effi­ciency Prod­ucts Pro­gram, Easy Cool Rewards, Energy Audit, Energy Effi­cient New Homes, and a pro­gram for low income cus­tomers called Com­mu­nity Connections.

Pro­grams for busi­nesses include Incen­tive Pro­grams, Busi­ness Energy Ana­lyzer Light­ing Incen­tives, Motors and Dri­ves Incen­tives, Mer­can­tile Cus­tomer Pro­gram, Refrig­er­a­tion and Com­mer­cial Food Ser­vice Pro­gram, Traf­fic Sig­nal Pro­gram, Spe­cialty Equip­ment Pro­gram, Cus­tom Incen­tives Pro­gram HVAC Incen­tives Pro­gram, Energy Effi­cient New Homes, and for Builders, Energy Effi­cient New Homes.

DeV­ille said FirstEn­ergy is proac­tive in keep­ing infra­struc­ture for power grids and lines as trou­ble free as pos­si­ble, not­ing the com­pany had its cus­tomers up and run­ning in four days after last July’s ‘dere­cho’ storm.

“For sev­eral decades, we’ve had a plan in place that inspects our sys­tem to iden­tify those areas that require atten­tion,” he explained. “We take a sam­pling of all of our wooden struc­tures and per­form a ground line test (poles usu­ally break at the ground line) and deter­mine the integrity of the pole. We clas­sify it into ‘repair now’ or ‘repair later’ pri­or­i­ties, and I think that con­tributes to the strength of our system.”

He said the com­pany gets to every pole over a five-year period – and that includes some areas that have under­ground equipment.

“It’s dif­fi­cult to deter­mine the integrity of what you can’t see, but you can make sure the ter­mi­nal points above ground meet stan­dards and expec­ta­tions,” he said.

When it comes to trans­mis­sion lines, he said FirstEn­ergy is proac­tive in uti­liz­ing mod­ern tech­nol­ogy with a fleet of heli­copters that ‘fly our lines on peri­odic basis and use spe­cial cam­eras that give us insight into the integrity of the sys­tem from the air.’

Dereg­u­la­tion of pub­lic util­i­ties means many home and busi­ness own­ers are now able to choose their ser­vice provider. What’s the benefit?

“If you live in Ohio Edison’s ter­ri­tory, we are respon­si­ble for the poles, wires and meters, but you can pur­chase the energy from any approved sup­plier that you desire,” DeV­ille said. “It dri­ves com­pe­ti­tion and for that por­tion of your elec­tric bill, which is about half, you can nego­ti­ate your best rate.”

He pointed out home­own­ers prob­a­bly don’t have as much nego­ti­a­tion power as a big busi­ness, so that’s why these ‘aggre­ga­tion pools’ — much like a farm­ers co-op – were created.

“Com­mu­ni­ties like Mt. Gilead, Edi­son and Card­ing­ton have already done that and, for those res­i­dents within the vil­lage lim­its, they are able to par­tic­i­pate in an elec­tric aggre­ga­tion program.

The vot­ers approved that in a bal­lot issue a few years ago and gave the may­ors autho­riza­tion to enter into the best con­tract they could nego­ti­ate at the time on their behalf.”

DeV­ille explained even if you have one of those pro­grams avail­able to you, you don’t have to participate.

“For instance, if you live in one of those com­mu­ni­ties and the mayor got a cer­tain rate for the vil­lage but you got a bet­ter rate through another seller, you could be on your own,” he said. The owner of the poles, trans­form­ers and power lines is not nec­es­sar­ily the owner of the elec­tric­ity that flows through the wires. It was much like the dereg­u­la­tion of ‘Ma Bell’ twenty years ago, he said, where they owned the lines but the dial tone was owned by some­one else.

How can res­i­dents find out what their options are?

“At the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Com­mis­sion web­site (www.puco.ohio.gov/puco/) you can do the Apples to Apples com­par­i­son chart, which iden­ti­fies who the cur­rent sup­pli­ers or ven­dors are who are offer­ing prod­ucts and their prices in your area” DeV­ille noted. “That ser­vice has been around for five or six years now. There’s also an Apples to Apples chart for gas service.”

DeV­ille pointed out that those who are served by Con­sol­i­date Elec­tric do not have provider options, as CE is a coop­er­a­tive and is exempt from that law.

FirstEnergy’s base rates have not changed since 2008 when they made a com­mit­ment they would hold their rates firm for five years. They offer an app for smart­phones to down­load to check power out­ages, or res­i­dents can go to www.firstenergycorp.com/outages where they can report an out­age or get infor­ma­tion on an out­age. Click on map for Ohio, which will bring up the 24 hour power cen­ter, then enter a zip code or county and the site will give infor­ma­tion right down to the town­ship as to what’s going on.

FirstEn­ergy cov­ers the west cen­tral por­tion of Mor­row County along with Edi­son, Mt Gilead, and Card­ing­ton. The elec­tric provider shares the major­ity of Mor­row County with Con­sol­i­date Elec­tric and Mid-Ohio Energy Coop­er­a­tive and the Ohio Power Com­pany. In Ohio, FirstEn­ergy is com­prised of The Illu­mi­nat­ing Com­pany, Ohio Edi­son, and Toledo Edison.

FirstEn­ergy also pro­vides power in Penn­syl­va­nia, New Jer­sey, West Vir­ginia, Mary­land and New York.

Posted by Taylor Kaser on Mar 6 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.