Vectren’s cost for gas supply drops slightly

A component of Vectren natural gas bills will fall slightly after the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio accepted the results of Vectren Energy Delivery of Ohio’s auction for default natural gas service.

The auction secured natural gas supply for Vectren’s customers from April 1, 2018, to March 31, 2019, setting a retail price adjustment of $0.087 per hundred cubic feet (ccf ), PUCO said this week.

An average residential customer uses about 80 ccf per month, so the retail markup might be close to a dollar less each month, a PUCO spokesman said.

“We can say a component of your bill will fall 1.3 cents per ccf,” said PUCO spokesman Matt Schilling. “But the gas price itself fluctuates month to month.”

Vectren’s default rate, known as the “standard choice offer,” changes monthly and is calculated as the sum of the retail price adjustment plus the New York Mercantile Exchange month-end settlement price, PUCO said.

The price adjustment reflects the winning bidders’ estimate of their cost to deliver natural gas to Vectren’s service area.

More immediately, cold weather is pushing natural gas bills higher.

Last week, Vectren warned customers that since they are using more natural gas in this dramatically colder weather, they can expect gas bills to be higher. Vectren’s energy delivery subsidiaries provide gas and/or electricity to about 20 percent of Ohio.