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Decision on power benefits all Ohioans

It may be that the sun has gone down on a politically correct proposal that would have forced many Ohioans to pay unnecessarily high electric bills. If so, good.

For months, American Electric Power had planned to install a 49.9-megawatt solar power facility, the largest array east of the Rocky Mountains, southeast of Zanesville. In comparison, AEP’s coal-fired Mitchell Plant, near Moundsville, has about 30 times the capacity of the proposed solar facility.

At one time it was estimated AEP’s Turning Point Solar station would cost about $250 million. The firm’s plan was for customers to cover that, as well as the relatively high cost of power from the array.

Liberal politicians and radical environmentalists loved the plan. So did staff members at the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio.

But last week, the PUCO governing board voted 3-1 against the proposal. That means AEP may not be allowed to pass the unnecessarily high cost of building a solar power array that isn’t needed on to customers.

That is good news for Ohioans and other AEP customers who may have been forced, in effect, to buy power from the Turning Point project. PUCO officials should continue to insist that utility customers be served as economically as possible, without making political correctness part of the strategy.

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