FirstEnergy Corp. is still weighing its options on what to do with the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station.
On the company's quarterly earnings call Wednesday, FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones said the strategic review of the company's nuclear power plants continues and will be completed by mid-2018.
FirstEnergy spokesperson Jennifer Young said in an email Thursday that the review could result in a number of outcomes for the plants, including sale or closure.
"This is consistent with the announcement in November 2016, when we said that we were exiting competitive generation due to challenges in the competitive markets, including weak power prices, insufficient results from recent capacity auctions and anemic demand forecasts. No decisions have been made for our nuclear plants at this time," Young said.
Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp., which owns the plant, is planning to sell or close Davis-Besse and a dozen others in 2017 or early 2018 unless state officials change energy regulations that would make it financially feasible to keep the plants running, Jones said at an industry conference in December. And it looks unlikely that the state would take those measures, he said.
"We have made our decision that over the next 12 to 18 months we're going to exit competitive generation and become a fully regulated company," Jones said. "We are not going to wait on those states to decide what they are going to do there."
Davis-Besse, which began generating electricity in 1977, was Ohio's first nuclear power plant. It has a 900 megawatt generating capacity, enough to power 1 million homes, according to FirstEnergy.
