Grayslake residents will soon seek alternate energy provider

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Updated: August 2, 2011 2:23AM

Shopping for electricity on the open market will soon become a reality for Grayslake residents that seek a change in their traditional provider.

The Grayslake Village Board has given final approval to an operational plan for implementing the Electricity Aggregation Program that local voters approved by a margin of 80 percent in April’s referendum.

Since then, two public hearings have been held with no opposition expressed, and the committee of the whole recently recommended adoption to the Village Board at its July 19 meeting.

The program is designed to reduce electrical costs for local residents and small businesses in town by combining the community’s electrical needs for all individual customers into a single bid to be arranged by the Village, according to Mayor Rhett Taylor.

Taylor stressed the point that such a program is completely voluntary. Citizens can remain ComEd electricity customers, or after comparing costs may decide to switch to another lower priced alternate energy supplier based upon the Village soliciting a low bid with an alternate energy company.

However, ComEd will remain the statewide distributor of power through its statewide grid system as mandated by the Illinois General Assembly.

Village Administrator Mike Ellis said the program would be an important new service for residents that will save them money on their utility bills. He said the initial phases of the program could get underway as soon as September.

“It will then take about 60 days to obtain bids from alternate energy companies and select the low bidder. We should be in operation before the end of the year,” Ellis indicated.

Users will be billed monthly, and the bill will designate both the supplier of the electricity, and indicate ComEd as the distributor with a separate charge to be determined.

Grayslake will only be the second community in Illinois to implement such a program, Ellis said.

Obviously, energy prices will be the key in soliciting customers, although some maintain that service and other products also have a bearing on price.

After a decade, many people in Illinois still don’t realize that the electricity market has been deregulated by the state legislature to a great extend.

The Illinois Commerce Commission recently opened a Web site — pluginillinois.org — that carries a spread of monthly fluctuating costs comparing ComEd with a host of other alternate energy supplier costs. Once on the Web site, click “compare offers now.”

Ellis said the term Electricity Aggregation indicates that “A whole is formed by combining many parts,”

“That’s what we are trying to do for Grayslake residents. We want to develop a pool of users that can then determine their own price outcomes and decide how much they want to pay for electricity and have a say in receiving quality service. The program is completely voluntary,” Ellis insisted.

In response to a question, he said the only Illinois community that has formed an Electricity Aggregation Program is Fulton, a farming community on the Mississippi River opposite Clinton, Iowa.

“They report good results in selecting a supplier that has saved their residents 21 percent below ComEd rates,” Ellis said. With a larger pool of residents to draw from, Ellis is hoping that Grayslake can do even better,