Village of Poplar Grove announces new electric aggregation program

By Kathryn Menue
Editor
POPLAR GROVE – The Village of Poplar Grove is proud to announce the beginning of their electrical aggregation program.
According to the Buzz Blog article, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Municipal Electricity Aggregation in Illinois,” electrical aggregation “is when a community bands together” and “agrees to purchase electricity supply as a group, with the hope of achieving a lower rate than if the individual were to buy it on their own.”
Years ago, Poplar Grove began looking into the electrical aggregation venture.
According to Plug In Illinois (www.pluginillinois.org), Poplar Grove held a referendum in November of 2012 to look into electrical aggregation programs.
Since the referendum, the Village of Poplar Grove has ventured into this electric aggregation to give its residents more options when it comes to selecting an energy provider.
“Electrical aggregation gives the residents an opportunity to join in for a lower rate than ComEd offers,” Poplar Grove Village Administrator Diana Dykstra said. “They [residents] don’t have to participate, but they are at least provided that option and that is what is important: being able to provide options.”
Through this electrical aggregation program, the Village of Poplar Grove found that Constellation: An Exelon Company offered a bid of 6.778 cents per kilowatt hours (kWh) of energy for Poplar Grove residents; whereas, ComEd, the sole energy provider for Poplar Grove until this point, offered rates of 7.006 kWh.
With the Constellation energy source, customers would save .228 cents per kWh of energy in their homes, which could potentially lower energy costs in their households.
According to Dykstra, this plan “saves the difference in rates,” so everyone’s plan will still be different. So far the rates have kept going up every year with ComEd, and with the switch to Constellation residents would be locked into the 6.778 cents per kWh for 36 months beginning in March of 2016.
However, the decision is ultimately up to Poplar Grove residents on whether or not they want to switch from ComEd to Constellation.
Plus, residents won’t have to worry about being locked into a contract either.
According to Dykstra, customers can switch back and forth between ComEd and Constellation anytime.
“There is no penalty for switching,” Dykstra said, but Constellation encourages anyone who would like to switch to the electrical aggregation program to opt in by Feb. 5.
For more information on the electrical aggregation program or to opt in to the new Constellation energy program visit: http://www.constellation.com/residential/pages/il-poplargrove.aspx.