More Ohioans are getting their power shut off as energy costs surge

More and more Ohioans are struggling to pay their utility bills. That’s one clear takeaway from the latest utility reports showing how many customers had their power shut off because of unpaid bills.

Across the state’s regulated electric utilities, an average of 7.7% of customers had their power turned off because of past-due bills for the latest reporting year, ending May 31 — a higher rate than in any of the three preceding periods, which ran between 6% and 7%.

Each customer is one household or business, so the total number of people affected would be more than the total of nearly 345,000 disconnections. The average amount customers owed when their power was cut was more than $60 greater than it was for the year before.

The company reports filed at the end of June with the Ohio Public Utilities Commission are yet one more sign of the energy affordability crisis affecting households nationwide.

“Families are put in an extremely vulnerable position when electric utilities shut off their electricity for a debt,” said Shelby Green, a research and communications manager with the Energy and Policy Institute, a national watchdog group that promotes clean energy. Among other things, no electricity typically means no ability to cool or heat homes, refrigerate food, and turn lights on at night.

The bump in disconnection rates could be driven by numerous factors — such as that families have less money left over after higher expenses for healthcare, food, and other needs. Yet the skyrocketing cost of energy certainly plays a role.

The average Ohio electricity bill grew by more than 53% from June 2021 to June 2026, according to the Electricity Price Hub from Heatmap and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That’s significantly higher than the national average growth of 32% over that time period.

Energy bills have been on the uptick for multiple reasons: among them, ballooning electricity demand, much of it from data center developers; the impacts of extreme weather; and costs linked to aging transmission and distribution equipment.

In any case, experts agree that the U.S. needs more electrons flowing onto the grid. But that’s become increasingly difficult to accomplish as President Donald Trump throws sand in the gears of companies developing wind and solar — energy sources that are often relatively quicker and cheaper to build than fossil-fueled plants. His administration has not only killed renewable energy tax incentives but also snarled permitting and — in some cases — tried to halt projects, either through stop-work orders or payoffs.

“Instead of trying to suppress all these forms of energy that we need, we need to be doing everything we can to get all that energy online,” said Jesse Lee, a senior adviser for Climate Power, which advocates for progress on climate action and clean energy. ​“Then maybe you could start to catch up with the exponential increase in demand.”

While Trump’s actions affect projects nationwide, renewables developers face a particularly steep uphill battle in Ohio. The state’s permitting rules and local restrictions for wind and solar are notoriously challenging. Pending legislation could hamstring clean energy even more.

And House Bill 6, the 2019 law at the heart of Ohio’s ongoing corruption scandal, eliminated widely available utility-run energy-efficiency programs. Those initiatives can help households use less electricity, thus lowering their costs and potentially reducing the risk of overdue bills. The Trump administration has also moved to slash support for energy-efficiency upgrades.

While many people struggle to pay their power bills, utility executives are raking in the big bucks. An April analysis by the Energy and Policy Institute shows utility profits and executive compensation surging in recent years. Bill Fehrman, head of American Electric Power, which owns an Ohio utility, made a whopping $36 million in 2025.

Unless top utility executives and shareholders pass some of their take back to customers, Green says, ​“we’ll continue to see the trend of disconnections grow.”

A closer look at Ohio’s disconnection data

The topline figures about power shutoffs hide some dramatic differences between Ohio utilities.

Overall, the companies cut electricity to households about 345,000 times from June 2025 through May 2026. The average arrears — the amount owed at the time of the shutoff — was $558, up from $495 the year before.

FirstEnergy had the lowest disconnection rate for that latest reporting year, at 3.6%, as well as the least variability in average arrears in recent years. Since 2020, the company has beefed up efforts to help customers avoid shutoffs, including ​“more flexible payment plans, increased outreach to connect people with assistance, coordination with state and local programs, and expanded protections for vulnerable customers,” spokesperson Brooke Conlan said.

AEP’s Ohio Power utility had the highest rate of disconnections, at 15% — at least double that reported by FirstEnergy, AES Ohio, or Duke Energy. That continues a trend from the three preceding years.

“Turning off someone’s power is always a last resort, and we do not disconnect customers during extreme weather,” like heat waves, said an AEP spokesperson via email. The person did not provide their name or answer Canary Media’s question about why the company’s disconnection rate was so high compared with those of Ohio’s other regulated electric utilities.

More detailed information may help the state bring utility disconnection rates down.

For years, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio resisted requiring companies to provide disconnection data based on zip code. Such data could show whether utility shutoffs disproportionately impact communities of color or other vulnerable groups.

However, a 2024 settlement obligates AEP Ohio to provide that zip code data to the Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, which is the official state advocate for utility consumers. The office has finished reviewing that company’s data for 2023–2024 and plans to look for trends in information for subsequent reporting periods.

“Our analysis has shown that areas with high poverty rates do not always align with areas experiencing the highest number of disconnections, making local data important,” explained Ohio Consumers’ Counsel Maureen Willis. ​“This information helps OCC identify trends, target concerns, and advocate for solutions that reduce disconnections and keep consumers connected to essential electric service.”

The information can also help the Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel target its own outreach efforts, Willis said. That work can help people understand payment options, bill-assistance programs, and other consumer protections.

One point Willis noted that is not obvious from the lump-sum data: ​“Neighborhoods with the highest overdue utility balances were not always the same communities experiencing the most shutoffs.”

The 10 zip codes with the highest disconnection rates were primarily high-poverty areas in the cities of Columbus and Canton, where customers had their power shut off for lower average arrears than customers in rural and Appalachian areas did, Willis noted. However, it took longer for ratepayers in those less densely populated areas to get their power back. Higher accumulated debt — sometimes exceeding $4,000 — may make it more difficult for households to restore service quickly, Willis said.

The Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel now also receives zip code-level disconnection data from AES Ohio, as well as Northeast Ohio Natural Gas and Duke Energy Ohio’s natural gas utility, Willis noted.

Meanwhile, some Ohio advocates expect keeping up with power bills to get even more challenging as climate change drives hotter summers, requiring people to run their cooling units longer and harder.

“Now, with the summer and needing AC to even stay healthy, it seems like it’s only going to grow the problem,” said Morgan Harper, co-founder and executive director for Columbus Stand Up!, a grassroots organizing group that advocates for working people.