Power vendor takes on AEP | The Columbus Dispatch

American Electric Power has new competition on its home turf. Volunteer Energy of Pickerington is joining forces with FirstEnergy Solutions of Akron to sell electricity at a discount to small businesses in central Ohio.

[Fallsbury]

It's too bad, customers in the rural electric cooperative areas can not have choice of electric suppliers like AEP customers do. When is the state of Ohio going to change the laws allowing choice for rural electric cooperative customers. My last month's rural electric bill per kilowatt was 12.5 cents. Lets save some money for rural electric cooperative customers and have some competition and force the rural electric cooperatives to do a better job in holding down rate increases.

[Melissa]

It is a good alternative to ever increasing AEP price. The regulators (OCC and PUCO) look the other way and approve everything that AEP wants. Hence the stock dividends that are paid to AEP stock holders are very high. AEP executives get Millions of dollars worth of Stock options on top of their bonuses. Ohio's middle class and the poor got robbed like crazy in the past few years when there is/was plenty of electricity available(as per this article). It is high time we had an alternative power company that will be fair. I hope they expand fast enough to serve the residential market as well.

[You just watch]

In the next month or so there will be a notice that this company has suddenly decided not to challenge AEP or there is a dramatic increase in what they have to charge. It will be hush hush, and it will be the payback to AEP for their support of Teddy the taxer. And to all of you who said that the CEO of AEP was such an honorable man, hahahahahaha.

[Article just]

reminds people of another 'collective' composed of small central ohio governments that failed to deliver lower gas utility prices for their residents.