Sunbury Council holds first aggregation public hearing

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

Sun­bury Vil­lage Coun­cil mem­bers held a spe­cial coun­cil meet­ing last Tues­day (Novem­ber 20) evening, pre­ceded by the first of two pub­lic hear­ings required by the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Com­mis­sion of Ohio before the vil­lage files papers to pro­ceed with res­i­den­tial and small busi­ness elec­tric and nat­ural gas aggregation.

For nearly two years the Vil­lage of Sun­bury has been explor­ing acquir­ing elec­tric­ity for vil­lage facil­i­ties through an aggre­ga­tion agree­ment as a cost sav­ings mea­sure; and has also moved towards elec­tric and nat­ural gas aggre­ga­tion options for vil­lage res­i­dents by plac­ing elec­tric and gas aggre­ga­tion issues on the Novem­ber 8, 2011 ballot.

When the issues reached vot­ers they approved allow­ing the vil­lage to nego­ti­ate res­i­den­tial elec­tric and nat­ural gas aggre­ga­tion by sig­nif­i­cant mar­gins — 925 vil­lage vot­ers said YES to elec­tric aggre­ga­tion, 579 said NO; 935 vot­ers said YES to nat­ural gas aggre­ga­tion, 579 said NO.

In June mem­bers of vil­lage coun­cil and vil­lage admin­is­tra­tors inter­viewed poten­tial sup­pli­ers for the village’s elec­tric and national gas aggre­ga­tion pro­gram. In July, with the assis­tance of energy bro­ker Scott Bel­cas­tro, Trebel, Inc., they began cre­at­ing a plan of oper­a­tion and gov­er­nance; and in early Novem­ber coun­cil mem­bers approved both nat­ural gas and elec­tric plans of oper­a­tion and gov­er­nance and sched­uled Novem­ber 20 and Novem­ber 28 pub­lic hearings.

Bel­cas­tro was in cham­bers for last Tuesday’s pub­lic hear­ing and coun­cil ses­sion, where he gave an overview of his firm Trebel before answer­ing pub­lic and coun­cil questions.

“Trebel, LLC, was founded in 2010 to bring alter­na­tive energy providers directly to con­sumers and busi­nesses,” Bel­cas­tro said. “We form strong rela­tion­ships with energy sup­pli­ers that can meet the many needs of our cus­tomers. We offer a vari­ety of pro­grams such as fixed, vari­able and hybrid rate prod­ucts that have ser­vices in nearly every dereg­u­lated state. Our pri­mary mis­sion is to help clients lower their energy sup­ply costs, increase site effi­ciency, and lever­age state and fed­eral incen­tive opportunities.”

Bel­cas­tro said munic­i­pal aggre­ga­tion refers to many cus­tomers join­ing together to form a buy­ing group.

“The munic­i­pal­ity orga­nizes the pool­ing of its cit­i­zens to become the buy­ing group; the munic­i­pal­ity then seeks out offers on behalf of its con­stituents to get bet­ter pric­ing, terms and ser­vices than would be avail­able to an indi­vid­ual,” Bel­cas­tro said. “It’s sim­i­lar to garbage col­lec­tion con­tracts with the munic­i­pal­ity hav­ing the author­ity to nego­ti­ate on behalf of the entire community.”

Bel­cas­tro said there are two types of energy aggre­ga­tion pro­grams – opt-in and opt-out. In an opt-out pro­gram every qual­i­fied res­i­dent and small busi­ness in the com­mu­nity is included in the pro­gram and has 21-days from the date they receive a noti­fi­ca­tion in the mail that they are in the pro­gram to to opt-out. An opt-in pro­gram is the reverse, res­i­dents have the option to sign on, but if they do noth­ing they stay with their tra­di­tional utility.

The Vil­lage of Sun­bury is par­tic­i­pat­ing in an opt-out pro­gram. All vil­lage res­i­dents and small busi­nesses would auto­mat­i­cally be enrolled in the aggre­ga­tion pro­gram; indi­vid­ual mem­bers may choose to opt-out if they decide not to par­tic­i­pate. If res­i­dents or small busi­nesses are already signed up with a sup­plier they would not be included in the pro­gram; they have to wait to the end of their contract’s term or can­cel their exist­ing con­tract to be included.

The plans of oper­a­tion and gov­er­nance Bel­cas­tro has nego­ti­ated with the vil­lage would have elec­tric­ity sup­plied by Powell-based Bor­der Energy, and nat­ural gas sup­plied by Pickerington-based Vol­un­teer Energy.

Bel­cas­tro said sign­ing a one-year elec­tric aggre­ga­tion con­tract with Bor­der Energy would save res­i­dents 15 per­cent off gen­er­a­tion and trans­mis­sion charges that appear on their elec­tric bill; Amer­i­can Elec­tric Power’s dis­tri­b­u­tion charge would remain unchanged. Small busi­nesses will save 10 per­cent off of the gen­er­a­tion and trans­mis­sion of electricity.

Bor­der Energy’s res­i­den­tial early ter­mi­na­tion fee will be $50; and the elec­tric bill would still come from AEP with Bor­der Energy charges noted.

“Vil­lage res­i­dents would never pay more for elec­tric­ity than they would with the util­ity under the Bor­der Energy prod­uct,” Bel­cas­tro said. “It’s easy to join, easy to opt out, and com­pletely voluntary.”

Vol­un­teer Energy is a full-service energy sup­plier serv­ing busi­ness, res­i­den­tial and indus­trial users in six states, Bel­cas­tro said. Vol­un­teer Energy cur­rently offers a sav­ings of 7 per­cent off of the res­i­den­tial customer’s nat­ural gas bill adder, with no early ter­mi­na­tion fee. Because nat­ural gas rates will not be nego­ti­ated until Feb­ru­ary, Bel­cas­tro said, it’s not known whether or not the vil­lage would enter a nat­ural gas aggre­ga­tion agreement.

“Cus­tomers will get one bill from Colum­bia Gas with Vol­un­teer Energy on the bill,” Bel­cas­tro said. “For ser­vice issues, because Colum­bia Gas and Amer­i­can Elec­tric Power remain the local dis­trib­u­tor, they would be the one to call for ser­vice issues.”

Sun­bury res­i­dent War­ren Owen asked if the process would have to begin again when the vil­lage reaches city sta­tus, and as the vil­lage grows would res­i­dents get even bet­ter rate reductions.

Fred Holmes, who was in cham­bers rep­re­sent­ing Vol­un­teer Energy, said once vot­ers approve aggre­ga­tion it never has to go on a bal­lot again; Bel­cas­tro said rates are exam­ined every year and there’s always a poten­tial that a larger pool of par­tic­i­pants would receive a bet­ter elec­tric­ity rate.

Owen also asked how aggre­ga­tion impacts bud­get plans.

Holmes said nat­ural gas cus­tomers are per­mit­ted to remain on bud­get plans; Bel­cas­tro said elec­tric­ity cus­tomers can remain on AEP’s dis­tri­b­u­tion bud­get plan, but will not have bud­get plans for gen­er­a­tion and transmission.

Vil­lage res­i­dent Janet Met­zler asked if res­i­dents would receive an opt-out notice for gas and elec­tric in one letter.

“You will receive a let­ter for both pro­grams,” Bel­cas­tro said. “You can do both, one or none. A lot of res­i­den­tial cus­tomers and busi­ness own­ers don’t under­stand this process. By doing this the vil­lage is help­ing peo­ple who prob­a­bly would have done noth­ing because they don’t under­stand it.”

Holmes noted another mis­con­cep­tion area res­i­dents might have because of other aggre­ga­tors work­ing the village.

“There are peo­ple going door to door try­ing to sign up peo­ple for aggre­ga­tion,” Holmes said. “We don’t do that. Remem­ber, if peo­ple come to your door they’re not the vil­lage program.”

Coun­cil mem­bers had an up or down vote on the nat­ural gas and elec­tric aggre­ga­tion plans of oper­a­tion and gov­er­nance fol­low­ing yesterday’s (Wednes­day, Novem­ber 28) pub­lic hear­ing and vil­lage coun­cil meeting.

If the vil­lage approved both plans Bel­cas­tro will file the aggre­ga­tion appli­ca­tions with the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Com­mis­sion of Ohio, send opt-out noti­fi­ca­tions with 21 days for con­sumers to respond if they choose not to be in the aggre­ga­tion programs.

Bel­cas­tro will work with sup­pli­ers to pull data together. He said elec­tric would begin flow­ing at the new rates in March of 2013, nat­ural gas in May of 2013, with consumer’s sav­ings show­ing up on the next billing cycles after those dates.

Near the end of the coun­cil meet­ing, coun­cil mem­bers approved Res­o­lu­tion 2012–16 autho­riz­ing the exe­cu­tion of an energy man­age­ment agree­ment with Trebel, Inc. with a rule sus­pen­sion and emer­gency language.

Coun­cil mem­bers also approved Res­o­lu­tion 2012–17 autho­riz­ing exe­cu­tion of an elec­tric sales agree­ment with Bor­der Energy Elec­tric Ser­vices, Inc. for pro­vi­sion of elec­tri­cal energy for Vil­lage of Sun­bury facil­i­ties for a two-year period, rule sus­pen­sion and emer­gency lan­guage included. The agree­ment will save the vil­lage $42,000 in elec­tric­ity costs over a two-year period.

Posted by Gary Henery on Nov 28 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.