AES Indiana Rate Rehearing: The ROE Fight That Sets the Floor for Every Indiana Utility

Indiana Utility Consumer Counselor Abby Gray filed a petition for rehearing challenging the IURC's June approval of a $71 million AES Indiana base rate increase. The OUCC is contesting a 9.5% approved return on equity (they want 9.1%) along with a $3 million rate case expense pass-through and a payroll adjustment tied to over 100 vacant positions that the OUCC says produced a compensation windfall of more than $15 million.

There is a structural problem behind this proceeding worth naming directly. IURC Chair Anthony Swinger (elevated by Governor Braun from a 25-year career at the OUCC) is recused from voting on both the AES rehearing and Duke Energy Indiana's pending rate case due to his prior involvement with those proceedings. That removes the commissioner with the deepest consumer-advocacy background from the two most consequential proceedings before the commission right now.

The ROE floor this commission sets will inform rate cases across all five Indiana investor-owned utilities. If you are in AES's Central Indiana service territory, confirm now whether your industrial rate schedule is protected by the rate freeze through 2030 or whether tracker mechanisms for fuel and infrastructure costs can increase your rates before this case resolves.

For more on how tracker charges work and what the IURC's investigation into them means for your bill, see the IURC investigation into Indiana utility tracker charges and the follow-up on what the AES Indiana rate rehearing means for the SK hynix groundbreaking week.