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Residents of Washington may soon have a choice from whom they receive their electrical energy.
At a special city council meeting Oct. 10, the council unanimously approved entering into an agreement with Good Energy L.P. for consulting services regarding the municipal electric aggregation.
According to City Administrator Bob Morris, the state of Illinois has been deregulating energy for some time now. While businesses and municipalities have been shopping around their energy needs for a number of years now, the next phase of the deregulation allows “residential customers” — homeowners — to shop for alternative energy suppliers.
“Municipalities state-wide are basically looking into the possibility of getting bids where every resident in the City of Washington would have the option to change electric energy suppliers (from Ameren CILCO) to one company which would be under the umbrella of serving all residential units and small commercial customers in Washington,” Morris said.
“What we’re proposing to do — along with Peoria, East Peoria, Morton ... all across the state, (we’re) proposing to go through a process that would, if successful, would offer residential customers and small commercial customers the option of purchasing electricity at a lower rate of which they were already paying from Ameren CILCO.”
Morris said for the city to get the best bid possible, this will be an “opt out” program. Essentially, if residents have an electric bill at home and the city goes through this process and finds a lower cost option than Ameren CILCO, every resident in town will automatically be shifted to the lower cost option unless they elect to opt out.
“That is the best way municipalities can get the largest customer base and the smallest price,” Morris said.
Now that the consultant agreement with Good Energy L.P. has been approved, the next step in the process is having a referendum where residents will either vote to approve or end the whole process.
“There’s no financial agreement to enter into (for the consulting services),” Morris said. “The consulting companies are doing it on the prospect that they will be successful on the back end.
“Ultimately, the residents have to give the city the go-ahead.”
The city has been buying its energy at a lower rate from Integrys for a number of years now, according to Morris, and he said the city hasn’t seen a difference in service as a result.
“Ameren CILCO still delivers the energy and gets their payment for that and we will still call them if we have any problems, but the energy comes from Integrys,” he said. “It’s really seamless.
Residents of Washington may soon have a choice from whom they receive their electrical energy.
At a special city council meeting Oct. 10, the council unanimously approved entering into an agreement with Good Energy L.P. for consulting services regarding the municipal electric aggregation.
According to City Administrator Bob Morris, the state of Illinois has been deregulating energy for some time now. While businesses and municipalities have been shopping around their energy needs for a number of years now, the next phase of the deregulation allows “residential customers” — homeowners — to shop for alternative energy suppliers.
“Municipalities state-wide are basically looking into the possibility of getting bids where every resident in the City of Washington would have the option to change electric energy suppliers (from Ameren CILCO) to one company which would be under the umbrella of serving all residential units and small commercial customers in Washington,” Morris said.
“What we’re proposing to do — along with Peoria, East Peoria, Morton ... all across the state, (we’re) proposing to go through a process that would, if successful, would offer residential customers and small commercial customers the option of purchasing electricity at a lower rate of which they were already paying from Ameren CILCO.”
Morris said for the city to get the best bid possible, this will be an “opt out” program. Essentially, if residents have an electric bill at home and the city goes through this process and finds a lower cost option than Ameren CILCO, every resident in town will automatically be shifted to the lower cost option unless they elect to opt out.
“That is the best way municipalities can get the largest customer base and the smallest price,” Morris said.
Now that the consultant agreement with Good Energy L.P. has been approved, the next step in the process is having a referendum where residents will either vote to approve or end the whole process.
“There’s no financial agreement to enter into (for the consulting services),” Morris said. “The consulting companies are doing it on the prospect that they will be successful on the back end.
“Ultimately, the residents have to give the city the go-ahead.”
The city has been buying its energy at a lower rate from Integrys for a number of years now, according to Morris, and he said the city hasn’t seen a difference in service as a result.
“Ameren CILCO still delivers the energy and gets their payment for that and we will still call them if we have any problems, but the energy comes from Integrys,” he said. “It’s really seamless.
Morris added that he doesn’t know what the bids will come back looking like, but in Chicago — and he knows that our area is on a different scale compared to the Windy City — the residents in that area have seen a 20 percent decrease in electric energy costs just by bidding it out.
He hopes that going in with Peoria, East Peoria and other surrounding communities will help keep the bids low as well, but if the residents vote to move forward and bids come back higher than Ameren CILCO, then the city won’t pursue it any further.
Morris said he hopes that isn’t the case though.
“If it’s successful, residents will pay a little less on the energy portion of their current bill. We really won’t know until we go out and shop the market.”
Public information will be available when the time comes, whether that is in the form of mailings or meetings, Morris said he doesn’t have the details worked out yet, but should soon.
