AES Indiana responds to trees downed during storms in late June of 2023. (From filing with IURC)

By Leslie Bonilla Muñiz
Indiana Capital Chronicle

INDIANA — The powerful Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission will meet with the state’s “big five” investor-owned utilities about their reactions to storms a month ago, according to a Tuesday, AUg. 8, filing.

It’s a response to — but not a fulfillment of — an inquiry aimed at AES Indiana. The subsidiary of Virginia-based AES Corp., serves Hoosiers living in the Indianapolis area.

Storms left an estimated 100,000 customers without power between June 29 and July 4, according to AES. That prompted customer advocates to ask regulators on July 11 for an investigation.

“We’re pleased the Commission has finally broken their silence and look forward to participating in what we hope will be an inclusive, transparent, and robust investigation,” said Citizens Action Coalition Executive Director Kerwin Olson in a statement. His organization and the state Office of Utility Consumer Councilor jointly filed the investigation request.

“AES Indiana appreciates the opportunity to share and review our storm response, practices and procedures with the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission,” spokeswoman Kelly Young said in a statement to the Capital Chronicle.

The commission will hold a technical conference with AES Indiana on September 11, in person at downtown Indianapolis’ PNC Center and online.

In a order filed Tuesday, regulators asked the utility to provide an after-action summary of the storms, including: their impact, the number of customers affected, the utility’s response to the outages, the “common causes” of the outages, and “any lessons learned from the restoration processes.”

And they told AES Indiana to be ready to discuss challenges it faced in restoring power — staffing, supply chain, or otherwise — and to answer questions on customer communications, being proactive, gaps in power restoration processes, mutual aid and more.

“Following recent storms that brought significant damage throughout our state, our reliability has been questioned. AES Indiana will be open and transparent in addressing any concerns,” Young said. “We are committed to the safety and reliability of the service we provide to Central Indiana.”

But in a news release, the commission cautioned that the technical conference was for “information gathering” only, and that it hadn’t yet decided whether to launch a formal investigation. In a July 18 response to the joint request, AES Indiana argued that existing state regulations are sufficient and no investigation is needed.

The commission will additionally consider whether to consolidate the investigation request case with AES Indiana’s pending base rate case. The utility has said that its requested rates would bump customer bills by 13%, or an additional $17.49 monthly to the typical customer’s bill.

The coalition, however, challenged that math — announcing Tuesday that customers would actually pay nearly 19% more, or $23.65 more each month.

The commission will also meet with CenterPoint Energy, Duke Energy, Indiana Michigan Power and the Northern Indiana Public Service Company on September 22, also at the PNC Center and online.

Those utilities will similarly present an after-action summary to regulators and the Office of Utility Consumer Councilor.

“The Storm Response Meeting will provide Indiana utilities an opportunity to hear lessons learned from the restoration process we all experienced which can benefit future storm responses,” Young said.

AES Indiana’s meeting with regulators must be held separately because it’s part of a docketed proceeding.