Cincinnati business electricity: Duke and gas

Duke Energy Ohio, and the wholesale zone that crosses the river

The distributor at a Cincinnati meter is Duke Energy Ohio, and the first thing worth knowing about it is geographic: PJM's load forecast report defines the DEOK zone as the Duke Energy Ohio and Kentucky zone, so the same wholesale pricing zone spans both sides of the Ohio River even though the retail rules do not. A business north of the river is on Duke Energy Ohio under Ohio law and Ohio's competitive market; a site south of it is on Duke Energy Kentucky, a separate utility in a different jurisdiction. Two more names get confused with this one. AES Ohio — the former Dayton Power and Light — serves Dayton, not Cincinnati, and the two Ohio Duke and AES footprints are separate systems. And Cincinnati's zone is not the one Cleveland sits in either: Cleveland is the CEI sub-zone of the ATSI zone and Columbus is the CSP sub-zone of the AEP zone. Capacity and congestion costs settle at zone level, so where the address sits decides what it pays for the grid before any supplier is involved.

• Duke Energy Ohio distributes in Cincinnati; Duke Energy Kentucky is a separate utility across the river.
• PJM's January 2026 load forecast report names DEOK as the Duke Energy Ohio/Kentucky zone.
• Cleveland is the CEI sub-zone of ATSI and Columbus is the CSP sub-zone of the AEP zone, so no two Ohio metros share a settlement zone.
• AES Ohio, formerly Dayton Power and Light, serves the Dayton area and is a different utility again.

How Duke Energy Ohio's default price is actually set

A Cincinnati account that does not contract with a supplier takes Duke Energy Ohio's standard service offer, and that price is the output of an auction rather than a rate filed for a year. In Case No. 24-278-EL-SSO et al. the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio granted Duke its fifth electric security plan for a three-year term running from 1 June 2025 to 31 May 2028, and the plan continues auction-based procurement for standard service offer customers. Duke's competitive bidding process describes what the auctions buy: full-requirements service, meaning energy plus capacity plus the ancillary services a load-serving entity must hold, sold in tranches through a descending-price clock auction run by an independent auction manager. Tranche sizes are published ahead of each round — the site carried a tranche target announced on 28 August 2026 for the auction of 20 October 2026 — and the schedule is deliberately placed in periods where PJM has not yet run its base residual auction, which is the order's own account of why the auction calendar and the capacity calendar are aligned. The default price therefore moves on the auction calendar, and a customer sitting on it is exposed to whatever that calendar produces.

• PUCO Case No. 24-278-EL-SSO et al.: Duke Energy Ohio's fifth ESP runs 1 June 2025 to 31 May 2028.
• Standard service offer supply is procured through descending-price clock auctions in tranches, not set as a filed rate.
• Full-requirements service means the winning bidder carries energy, capacity and ancillary obligations.
• The auction schedule is set around PJM's base residual auction timing, so the default price and the capacity market move together.

The city's aggregation programme, and the line drawn at usage

Cincinnati runs governmental aggregation for electricity and for natural gas, and both are opt-out programmes: eligible accounts are swept in and receive a notice explaining how to leave. The electricity supplier of record is Dynegy Energy Services with a contract running to May 2029, and the gas supplier is IGS with a contract to August 2027 — different companies, different end dates, which is the first reason to treat the two programmes as separate decisions. The second is eligibility. The city publishes its own line: household accounts and small commercial customers that use less than 700,000 kWh of electricity a year at a single location are eligible, provided the account is current with its supplier, is not on a payment plan, and is not already under contract with another competitive supplier. A site above that ceiling is outside the programme, and no amount of enrolment will reach it. There is no cost to join, and the city's material states that customers may leave at any time without a cancellation fee.

• Electric supplier: Dynegy Energy Services, contract to May 2029. Gas supplier: IGS, contract to August 2027.
• Published eligibility: household accounts and small commercial sites below 700,000 kWh a year at one location.
• Also required: current with the supplier, not on a payment plan, not already contracted to another competitive supplier.
• Accounts are enrolled by sweep and can opt out; leaving is free and carries no cancellation fee.

Two clocks: a fixed programme price against a monthly default

The city's own explanation of the programme contains the most useful comparison lesson on the page. Duke's price to compare appears on the monthly bill and changes every month; the aggregation programme's price is set for a stated period of its contract instead. That means the savings question has no fixed answer — it depends on which month you look, and on whether the programme's price was struck before or after the market moved. The city's worked example tells the reader to find the price to compare on the bill, subtract the programme's price from it and multiply by usage, which is the right arithmetic and the same arithmetic this site recommends, with one addition: run it across twelve months rather than one, because a single summer or winter month will flatter whichever side happens to be priced better in it. Neither figure includes delivery. Distribution charges on a Cincinnati bill belong to Duke Energy Ohio's tariff and are unaffected by who supplies the commodity.

• Duke's price to compare resets monthly; the aggregation price is fixed for a stated period of the contract.
• Compare like periods — a programme price struck months earlier is being compared against a default price that has moved since.
• Run the comparison across twelve months of your own usage, not one month.
• Delivery charges stay with Duke Energy Ohio whatever the supply arrangement is.

There is no permanent exit from the gas side

Ohio's do-not-aggregate list gives a customer a way out that outlasts the programme: a customer can register with the PUCO to be excluded from future governmental electric aggregation, and the Consumers' Counsel explains that the customer's name and service address then appear on the Commission's public list. Cincinnati's own material describes the equivalent step for electricity and then says something it says about nothing else: there is no way to permanently opt out of the gas aggregation programme. A customer who leaves the gas programme can be enrolled again when the address changes or when a new gas aggregation contract takes effect. For a business reading its own position, that asymmetry has a practical consequence. Opting out is not a one-off action to file away; on the gas side it is a standing position that has to be re-taken whenever the programme is renewed or the account moves, and the eligibility question has to be asked of the city directly, because the published eligibility line is phrased around electricity consumption rather than gas volume.

• PUCO maintains a do-not-aggregate list for electricity; the Consumers' Counsel notes the names and addresses are published.
• The city's material states there is no permanent opt-out from the gas aggregation programme.
• Moving address, or a new gas aggregation contract, can re-enrol an account that had left.
• The published eligibility line is written around electricity usage, so confirm the gas position with the city rather than inferring it.

Above the ceiling, and what actually decides the price

A Cincinnati site above 700,000 kWh a year is an ordinary commercial procurement: Duke's standard service offer on the auction calendar on one side, a PUCO-certified supplier on the other. What decides the outcome there is not a headline rate but three things the account controls or can inspect. The first is load factor — kilowatt-hours divided by peak kilowatts times the hours in the period — because a peaky site pays for capacity it uses for a few hours a month. The second is whether a quoted price fixes capacity inside it or passes capacity through as a separate line, which is the difference between a price that is comparable and one that is not. The third is the contract's term and its notice deadline relative to the auction cycle above, since a three-year plan means the default price will be reset by further auctions before the plan runs out. None of those three needs a published rate to answer: each one is computed from the site's own meter data and its own contract.

• Capacity inside the price or passed through separately is the first question that makes quotes comparable.
• Load factor is kWh divided by peak kW times the hours in the period; low load factor means the peak sets the cost.
• Duke's three-year plan term means further auctions reset the default price during it.
• Interval data, not an annual total, is what the arithmetic needs.

What a Cincinnati business should send first

The eligibility caveat on every energy page applies here in a particular way, because Cincinnati is a city where two programmes and one utility overlap: competitive supply depends on the service address, the meter and the utility territory, and municipal utilities, cooperatives and some jurisdictions have no competitive choice at all. HighGround may receive compensation from providers on completed purchases, and an enquiry places no order and switches no supplier: nothing moves until a contract is signed, and the supplier serving the account keeps serving it until a switch completes. The file that makes a Cincinnati enquiry answerable separates the two commodities from the start, because the answers on the gas side and the electric side do not match.

• Twelve months of electric invoices and twelve months of gas invoices, each with supply and delivery separated.
• Whether the site uses less than 700,000 kWh a year at one location, which decides aggregation eligibility.
• Current aggregation status for both commodities, and any opt-out already on file.
• Duke Energy Ohio rate schedule, service class and meter type for the account.
• Any supply contract in place, with its expiry and its notice deadline.

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