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Date: 10/18/2022
LEVERETT – The town’s newsletter put it in boldface: residents’ electrical costs will double in 2023. The price will jump from 10.5 cents to 23.6 cents per kilowatt hour.
“We are all going to get socked because of Mr. Putin’s war and because of a bunch of other things that are going on in the economy and the energy world,” said Richard Nathhorst, a member of the town’s Energy Committee. “It’s unfortunate, but … that is the best rate that we could get for a 13 month contract, for Jan. 1 [2023].”
Three years ago Leverett hired a consultant, Colonial Power Group, to assist the town in buying power for all town residents, a practice called aggregation. Residents may opt out, and homeowners with solar arrays frequently did – but the town achieved a very high rate of participants who chose the 100 percent green option, wind energy from Texas, through the aggregation agreement.
Colonial Power Group lays blame for the price hike, in part, on the interruption of natural gas shipments from Russia to Europe. According to media reports, the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, running under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Europe, were recently damaged or severed. Demand has sharply increased as European countries look to the United States for energy. Those countries are now competing with ISO New England, the regional supplier, for natural gas, the predominant fuel for power plants in the six-state area.
“There’s no real difficulty, it’s just going to cost more,” Nathhorst said. “You go out there and buy a certain commodity for a certain rate, and that’s all it is. The alternative is to buy it from Eversource, who basically does the same thing. Generally, we can buy power cheaper than the Eversource … residential rate.”
The current R1 residential rate through Eversource, sans discounts or third party aggregation, is 15.348 cents per kilowatt hour. Nathhorst pointed to the low rate of 10.5 cents per kilowatt hour residents paid for the last three years as an indicator the town’s aggregation program has been beneficial. The newsletter discussion stated the 23.6 cent rate, which is approximate, will be for electricity comparable to what residents paid for under the previous aggregation contract, i.e. 100 percent green power.
According to the customer service department of Eversource, the residential rate is set by the commonwealth. The residential rate may include green energy options, but the utility does not offer a 100 percent green product, which Leverett’s aggregation customers do enjoy. The R1 rate also does not include line charges and other delivery costs, which are separately itemized on homeowners’ bills. A simple rate comparison may not reflect differences in total charges.
The R1 residential rate increased two months ago by about 1.6 cents per kilowatt hour. The current residential rate is only guaranteed through the end of the year. Utility rates may then increase again, which may have prompted Nathhorst to again think about plans for a microgrid. Those plans would keep the power generated by local solar producers, homeowners with arrays, in Leverett.
A microgrid for the municipal complex would be a first goal in the future, Nathhorst said, but “Ideally, we’d like to build a microgrid for the town. We have about 125 people who generate power and sell it to Eversource at a low rate.” Homeowners routinely have agreements with utility companies to sell excess generation they do not use. “What we would like to do is take that power and sell it to people who don’t have photovoltaics, in Leverett too, to keep the power in town and get the people who generate it a little bit more money for the power, and charge the people who buy the power a little bit less than the going rate.”
A microgrid of any configuration is not in the works for the near term, Nathhorst said, “But it’s something we have in mind.” He emphasized a microgrid serves a need that may increase as prices jump: resilience. The likelihood of more frequent severe weather also justifies a local grid. Only the Public Safety Building has an emergency back up power supply in case of a bad weather event.
“If the grid goes down, the library and the school are in the dark,” Nathhorst said. “If we had a microgrid at the municipal site then we could generate enough power to keep the lights on in all three buildings. That’s one of the ways you build in resiliency…(have) these buildings function as a warming center or a cooling center or a feeding location.”
In the meantime, residents have a less than popular method for lowering their electricity bill. Nathhorst said, “Use less power.”