Village locks in energy aggregation

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

Sunbury’s nat­ural gas and elec­tric aggre­ga­tion plans of oper­a­tion and gov­er­nance were both approved dur­ing last Wednesday’s (Decem­ber 5) Sun­bury Vil­lage Coun­cil meet­ing. The nat­ural gas aggre­ga­tion plan of oper­a­tion and gov­er­nance was cov­ered in Ordi­nance 2012–17; elec­tric aggre­ga­tion was cov­ered in Ordi­nance 2012–18. Both ordi­nances were approved with sus­pen­sion of rules and emer­gency lan­guage, mak­ing them effec­tive immediately.

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.

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 the nec­es­sary plans of oper­a­tion and gov­er­nance; and in early Novem­ber coun­cil mem­bers sched­uled two required pub­lic hear­ings on Novem­ber 20 and Novem­ber 28.

Bel­cas­tro, who described him­self as an inde­pen­dent bro­ker, said the plans of oper­a­tion and gov­er­nance Bel­cas­tro nego­ti­ated with the vil­lage would have elec­tric­ity sup­plied by Powell-based Bor­der Energy, and nat­ural gas sup­plied by Pickerington-based Vol­un­teer Energy.

For both elec­tric­ity and nat­ural gas, Bel­cas­tro will act as the vil­lage energy bro­ker, with no fees assessed to the vil­lage; the energy sup­pli­ers pay Belcastro.

Bel­cas­tro said sign­ing a one-year elec­tric aggre­ga­tion con­tract with Bor­der Energy would save res­i­dents a guar­an­teed 15 per­cent off AEP’s monthly 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. Elec­tric bills would still come from AEP with Bor­der Energy charges noted, nat­ural gas bills would still come from Colum­bia Gas with Vol­un­teer Energy charges noted.

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.

Before last Wednesday’s votes, vil­lage solic­i­tor David Brehm said the two ordi­nances are the cul­mi­na­tion of what coun­cil mem­bers had been mov­ing towards.

“This is leg­is­la­tion for­mal­iz­ing the plans of oper­a­tion and gov­er­nance that will allow us to approach the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Com­mis­sion of Ohio,” Brehm said. “To reduce the time frame I rec­om­mend the sus­pen­sion of the rules and emer­gency language.”

Sun­bury Mayor Tommy Hat­field said he thought the Novem­ber 28 pub­lic hear­ing went well.

“We had bet­ter atten­dance than we did at the first pub­lic hear­ing, and there were a lot of clar­i­fi­ca­tions,” Hat­field said. “Every­body had an oppor­tu­nity to speak.”

Bel­cas­tro, in cham­bers for the vote, said he also thought the sec­ond pub­lic hear­ing served its pur­pose of answer­ing resident’s ques­tions about the village’s opt-out nat­ural gas and elec­tric aggre­ga­tion programs.

“We will be going for­ward and will make appli­ca­tions to PUCO, then the mayor will sign them,” Bel­cas­tro said. “Because nat­ural gas prices are not set until Feb­ru­ary we can approve this, then in Feb­ru­ary when Vol­un­teer Energy under­stands what they can offer let­ters will be sent out for nat­ural gas aggre­ga­tion. With elec­tric­ity we will move immediately.”

In the past Bel­cas­tro empha­sized that the Sun­bury aggre­ga­tion pro­grams are opt-out pro­grams. Res­i­dents will receive sep­a­rate let­ters in the mail (one for elec­tric­ity one for nat­ural gas) noti­fy­ing them that they have 21 days to opt-out of either program.

If res­i­dents want to stay in the pro­gram they have to do noth­ing. If they don’t want to stay in they can opt out and there’s no fee. The con­tract is on an annual basis, and they can opt out again next year.

Posted by Gary Henery on Dec 12 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.