The state’s highest court, the Ohio Supreme Court, ruled last Wednesday that submetering companies, or the middlemen buying electric and other utilities at wholesale cost to resell it, must be regulated like other utility companies.
Lawmakers have said submetering companies offer the same as what traditional utility companies do, but without the regulatory strings attached, like following consumer protections, offering payment assistance programs or honoring disconnection procedures.
Submetering is common at apartments or other multitenant housing, where apartment managers buy utility services and then include the cost in the rent, often dividing based on individual usage among tenants.
“The court’s decision doesn't solve the problem, it provides a pathway to a solution,” said Mark Whitt, a regulatory attorney who owned a condo that was submetered.
That’s since the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) does the actual regulating, and the Ohio Supreme Court’s ruling reversed a PUCO ruling that Nationwide Energy Partners was not a utility.
“The lesson learned for me is that our system, it’s slow,” Whitt said, “but eventually, it gets most things mostly right.”
In a statement, a spokesperson for Nationwide Energy Partners said it disagreed with the court’s ruling but would
“We look forward to working with the PUCO and Ohio legislators on regulation and legislation that provides clear governance, regulatory certainty and strong consumer protections for the submetering industry,” the spokesperson wrote in an email.
Lawmakers have proposed varied ways to more strictly regulate submetering, from House Bill 173 to House Bill 265.
