Electricity aggregation opt-out period over

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

Trebel’s Scott Bel­cas­tro, the Vil­lage of Sunbury’s energy bro­ker, was in cham­bers dur­ing last Wednesday’s (March 6) Sun­bury Vil­lage Coun­cil meet­ing, along with Fred Holmes of Vol­un­teer Energy, to present an update on the village’s res­i­den­tial and small busi­ness elec­tric­ity and nat­ural gas aggre­ga­tion programs.

Holmes began stump­ing for Vil­lage Coun­cil to place the two res­i­den­tial and small busi­ness aggre­ga­tion issues – elec­tric­ity and nat­ural gas — on the bal­lot well over two years ago; and when the issues reached vot­ers they approved allow­ing the vil­lage to nego­ti­ate res­i­den­tial elec­tric and nat­ural gas aggre­ga­tion by sig­nif­i­cant mar­gins. 
The vil­lage sub­se­quently approved Bel­cas­tro to serve as its energy bro­ker. Bel­cas­tro then nego­ti­ated an elec­tric­ity aggre­ga­tion pro­gram with Powell-based Bor­der Energy; Vol­un­teer Energy would be the vil­lage nat­ural gas provider if a nat­ural gas aggre­ga­tion pro­gram moves forward.

The Elec­tric­ity Plan of Gov­er­nance that Bel­cas­tro nego­ti­ated between Bor­der Energy and the vil­lage guar­an­tees vil­lage res­i­dents 15 per­cent off gen­er­a­tion and trans­mis­sion of elec­tric­ity (AEP remains the local dis­trib­u­tor so AEP’s dis­tri­b­u­tion charge will remain unchanged), and 10 per­cent off gen­er­a­tion and trans­mis­sion for small busi­nesses, both for a 12-month term.

Res­i­dents had 21 days after receiv­ing a let­ter describ­ing the pro­gram to opt-out; if they failed to opt-out they are auto­mat­i­cally enrolled in the program.

“Tues­day was the last day for opt-out responses, they were due no later than March 5,” Bel­cas­tro said dur­ing last Wednesday’s coun­cil meet­ing. “We only had 15 phone calls out of over 1,670 house­holds, mostly ques­tions, three of them decided to go their own route.”

Bel­cas­tro said of 1,677 poten­tial res­i­den­tial elec­tric­ity cus­tomers in the vil­lage there were 118 opt-outs, for a 93 per­cent par­tic­i­pa­tion rate. Of 140 poten­tial small busi­ness cus­tomers there is an 81 per­cent par­tic­i­pa­tion rate.

“Over­all the res­i­den­tial program’s ben­e­fit is a cumu­la­tive $128,169 back in the hands of mem­bers of the com­mu­nity,” Bel­cas­tro said. “Every­thing has gone extremely smoothly. We will sub­mit the final num­bers to AEP and on April 1 every­thing will be up and running.”

Holmes said because of nat­ural gas auc­tion results, Vol­un­teer Energy would be able to con­tinue with last year’s sav­ings, 7 per­cent off the adder on the Colum­bia Gas bill.

Bel­cas­tro said he, as the vil­lage energy bro­ker, would need to file a final nat­ural gas opt-out let­ter with Pub­lic Util­i­ties Com­mis­sion of Ohio, Holmes will get access to the Colum­bia Gas cus­tomer list, and there would be a 10-day wait­ing period before send­ing the gas opt-out let­ters to Sun­bury residents.

Bel­cas­tro and Holmes both agreed that nat­ural gas sav­ings could begin on June 1.

In other busi­ness, coun­cil mem­bers briefly dis­cussed enact­ing leg­is­la­tion for No Smok­ing areas in vil­lage parks, espe­cially near playgrounds.

Vil­lage Solic­i­tor David Brehm said any No Smok­ing leg­is­la­tion should be prop­erly vet­ted; that enact­ing such leg­is­la­tion should be a slow process to allow for pub­lic dialogue.

Sun­bury mayor Tommy Hat­field asked if areas of parks could be des­ig­nated as No Smok­ing areas with­out leg­is­la­tion; Brehm said for the rules to have teeth leg­is­la­tion would be required.

Coun­cil mem­bers approved spend­ing $5,686 to pur­chase a Cheshire Road Lift Sta­tion pump; approved a pur­chase order to pay Rinehart-Walters-Danner $24,736 for the first half year of the village’s lia­bil­ity insur­ance pre­mium; $6,091 to the Delaware County Engi­neer for 113 tons of road salt; and $9,384 to CT Con­sul­tants for Sun­bury Mead­ows inspec­tions — a pass-through account.

Sunbury’s web­site is located at < sunburyvillage.com >.


Sun­bury Vil­lage Coun­cil meets the first and third Wednes­day of every month at 7:30 p.m., third floor coun­cil cham­bers, Sun­bury Town Hall. Coun­cil com­mit­tees meet one hour before reg­u­larly sched­uled coun­cil ses­sions. All vil­lage coun­cil and coun­cil com­mit­tee meet­ings are open to the public.

Posted by Gary Henery on Mar 13 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.