In two months, Ohio's five-year transition into deregulating electric utilities will expire, but the price of power hasn't changed much for most in northwest Ohio.

And, the competition that regulators expected hasn't materialized.

But there is one way for Toledo Edison customers to pay less for electricity: move.

Michigan has lower rates, and most municipal and nonprofit electric cooperatives in the region have cheaper rates than the predominant utility in metro Toledo. However, those lower rates are only for people living in one of those other service territories.

Toledo Edison, which serves about 300,000 customers, charges 11.4 cents per kilowatt-hour based on an average consumption of 750 kilowatt-hours per month.

The average rate in Ohio is 8.3 cents, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. And Bowling Green's municipal utility charges its 11,000 customers 6.7 cents, one of the lowest rates in the state.

A customer there who uses 750 kilowatts a month pays $50.25, before taxes. A Toledo Edison customer pays $85.50, before taxes.

The reason for the difference is largely the number of power plants Toledo Edison has, and the debts it has yet to repay for building them, particularly its nuclear-fueled plants.

FirstEnergy Corp., of Akron, which owns Toledo Edison and Ohio Edison, built two nuclear power plants as well as other generating facilities in the 1970s when borrowing costs were high, resulting in debt payments lasting 30 to 40 years. One of those projects is the Davis-Besse nuclear plant near Oak Harbor.

"That puts our costs at a different place than where other companies are," said Ellen Raines, a spokesman.

Kevin Maynard, Bowling Green's director of utilities, said his city's utility and nonprofit co-ops can charge less because they bill only for the cost of services. Plus, rural electric cooperatives get state and federal subsidies.

But they also haven't invested in expensive power plants, especially nuclear facilities. The municipal and co-op utilities serve fewer customers, so they don't need big generator plants, and if they have to buy power on the open market, it generally is in small quantities, experts said.

Bowling Green, for example, gets power mainly from a hydroelectric plant it co-owns with other municipal utilities, then augments it with power produced by four wind turbines and landfill gas, Mr. Maynard said. The diversity lets it keep rates low and avoid the expensive spot market, he added.

Twenty-four Ohio electric cooperatives built and now own a 1,200-megawatt coal-fired plant near Steubenville on the Ohio River. The plant provides much of their everyday needs.

Some also have built or tied into mini-power plants fueled by natural gas. Those plants, which are cheap to build compared with a traditional power plant, are designed to run only during peak use times, such as hot summer days when air conditioners are cranked up.

As a result, municipal and co-op rates tend to fluctuate frequently, depending on whether extra power is needed or whether other costs are incurred.

The co-op-owned plant near Steubenville is adding a system to make the emissions from the plant cleaner, and those costs are likely to raise customer rates at least temporarily.

Toledo Edison, on the other hand, has had a fixed rate for 10 years and has proposed to freeze that rate for three more years, Ms. Raines said.

In return for the freeze, state regulators have granted the company approval to continue charging a fee to help repay the firm's debts.

Gary Moore, a finance professor at the University of Toledo and an opponent of electric deregulation, said the excuse for higher rates to cover costs incurred 30 years ago must end soon.

"At some point we should have paid for those plants," he said. "Why are we still paying after 30 years?"

FirstEnergy companies have long had the highest electricity rates for urban areas in the state, and the latest survey by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio confirms that.

Still, some fees that state regulators had permitted FirstEnergy to charge have discouraged competitors from selling electricity in northern Ohio.

Some bulk-buying groups had offered slightly lower rates for the past few years, but it is not clear whether that will continue after this year, and a state-monitored auction last year seeking bids for lower-priced energy failed.

That leaves Toledo Edison customers with no choice in buying electricity.

Power companies in southern Ohio have lower rates than FirstEnergy and other investor-owned utilities in Ohio because historically they did not build a lot of power plants and generally stayed away from nuclear technology.

Greg Heath, utilities director for the city of Napoleon, which has a municipal power system, said price volatility has become a problem.

Napoleon has no power plant and shops for electricity on the open market. It charges residents 7.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, but that is up from 4.9 cents a year ago.

"It's gone up and we're hearing about it all the time, but there's nothing we can do about it," he said.

Consumers Energy and Detroit Edison, big utilities that serve customers in southeast Michigan, charge less than 9 cents per kilowatt-hour. However, Consumers has just eight plants that generate 6,400 megawatts and Detroit Edison has 13 plants that generate 10,300 megawatts. Each has one nuclear plant.

FirstEnergy has 20 plants, including three nuclear plants, that generate 13,400 megawatts serving customers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.

In Toledo, Lucas County Commissioner Pete Gerken has long advocated that Toledo set up a municipal utility similar to Bowling Green's.

But city residents would need about 350 megawatts, a huge amount of power.

He proposes to get there in phases. "Start with an industrial customer and some neighborhoods," he said. "As a muni, you'd have to grow slowly."

The planned construction of a coking plant between Toledo and Oregon could be a first step, he said.

As a byproduct, the factory is to produce steam that could generate 100 megawatts, which could be used by the city to offset its power needs.

The remaining 250 megawatts that the city would need could be bought from an investor-owned supplier such as AMP-Ohio Inc., which provides power to many Ohio municipal utilities, he said.

But Mr. Maynard, of Bowling Green, cautioned that electricity may not be cheaper in the future, especially as demand for power keeps rising, and that may require new power plants. No big power plants have been built in 30 years.

"The power will probably be there in the future, but the question is: At what price?" he said.

Contact Jon Chavez at: jchavez@theblade.com or 419-724-6128.

First Published October 30, 2005, 11:48 a.m.