NIPSCO Investigation: $2.3B Under Scrutiny, 28,000 Still Without Power

The OUCC's Ashley Bishop confirmed the scope of what the state is now examining: NIPSCO customers paid over $81 million for vegetation management from 2023 through 2025, and the utility has been authorized approximately $2.3 billion in customer funds to replace aging infrastructure since 2016. The IURC is now being asked how those dollars were spent.

As of Monday morning, roughly 10,000 customers remained without power (down from a peak of 374,500) nearly two weeks after August 11 storms. A class-action lawsuit alleging failure to maintain a standard vegetation trimming cycle has already been filed, which creates an independent discovery track that could surface internal capital allocation records the regulatory proceeding alone might not compel.

NIPSCO has consistently ranked among Indiana's highest-cost investor-owned utilities in recent IURC filings. The reliability record now under investigation raises the question of what ratepayers actually received for that premium. Whether or not another 14-day event is likely, the investigation itself confirms that reliability risk in NIPSCO territory is now a documented regulatory concern.

If you're running a plant in Lake County and you haven't quantified what a multi-day outage costs your operation, that number is the input every backup-power and supply-clause decision runs through. The IURC investigation into Indiana utility tracker charges and the GenCo appeal putting the NIPSCO rate increase path back in front of Indiana manufacturers are both worth reading alongside today's developments.