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Date: 6/20/2023
City and town officials, as well as representatives from Mass Power Choice LLC, met for a public meeting on June 6 to talk about a new municipal electricity aggregation program that could give residents and businesses more power over the price and environmental impact of the electricity they use.
Northampton Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra, Pelham Select Board Chair Bob Agoglia and Amherst Town Manager Paul Bockelman were in attendance at the virtual forum to hear more about the electricity aggregation benefits from representatives of Mass Power Choice.
If implemented, the Valley Green Energy electricity program would allow the three communities to use their collective buying power to increase the amount of renewable electricity in the electricity supply for all three communities.
“The program doesn’t yet exist,” said Stephanie Ciccarello, the Amherst director of sustainability. “But this comment period is for people to ask questions and let us know whether or not they are in favor of becoming a community choice aggregation.”
Paul Gromer, a Mass Power Choice LLC consultant, said during the virtual meeting that community choice electricity aggregation is impacting other communities in the state in many positive ways.
For example, Gromer said that money collected from an electricity aggregation in Cambridge allowed the city to build its own solar energy project that benefits people enrolled in the program, while a similar program in Nantucket supported and paid for those who want to put solar arrays on their properties.
One of the more promising opportunities, according to Bromer, is to have community aggregation programs sponsor low-income community solar programs where low-income members of the community would receive bill credits as a result of solar-produced electricity.
According to the Valley Green Energy website, municipal electricity aggregation is a form of group electricity purchasing. An electricity aggregation program like Valley Green Energy replaces one’s electricity supplier, and it changes the price that your utility, Eversource or National Grid, uses to calculate the supply charge on one’s electric bill.
While electricity aggregation can increase the amount of renewable electricity, it cannot replace one’s electric utility.
According to Ciccarello, most people in the three communities currently have National Grid or Eversource Basic Service prices, but if this Valley Green Energy program were implemented, prices for the aggregation program could be competitive.
“With a community choice aggregation, we can offer competitive prices, but it doesn’t guarantee that the prices will be below the basic service prices,” Ciccarello said. “We can, however, offer more options and offer a greener supply of electricity.”
According to Marlana Patton, a Mass Power Choice LLC representative, community choice aggregation can benefit the three communities in different ways, like, providing cleaner electricity, competitive and stable prices and offering consumer protections.
Without Valley Green Energy, one’s utility usually provides two services, and the electric bill includes charges for both of these services: electricity delivery and electricity supply.
Under Valley Green Energy, the same utility the user has — like National Grid for Northampton customers, or Eversource for Amherst and Pelham customers — still delivers one’s electricity, but the user no longer has Basic Service for the supply portion of the bill. Instead, Valley Green would use the group’s purchasing power of Amherst, Northampton and Pelham to choose an electricity supplier and to determine the price of one’s electricity supply and the renewable energy content of your electricity.
Even with Valley Green, the relationship between the utility and the user does not change and electricity still flows without interruption.
According to Patton, customers who currently use a basic service experience with their utilities typically experience cost changes every season, including spikes during the winter, but with Valley Green Energy, the program would be able to sign a long-term contract that provides long term price stability for six or more months.
“Valley Green Energy is going to be something called a ‘green aggregation,’” Patton said. “You’re going to automatically be getting more clean renewable electricity than you would if you were just getting your utility’s basic service.”
If Valley Green Energy is launched, “Amherst, Northampton and Pelham will join more than 150 other cities and towns in Massachusetts with similar programs.”
For now, though, the three communities are still in the preliminary phase of this process. According to Ciccarello, the communities must develop an aggregation plan and submit it to regulators for approval.
To ensure that the public is involved in this developmental process, the communities are asking the public to review and comment on the draft aggregation plan, which is available on each of the community’s website, as well as the Valley Green Energy site. People may submit comments either through email or mail, and information on how to submit comments is on the Valley Green Energy website: https://www.masspowerchoice.com/ValleyGreenEnergy?. Comments are allowed until June 30.
The comments will be submitted as part of an application package that is sent to the state’s Department of Public Utilities for consideration. From there, the department will review the application, which can take up to a year. MassPowerChoice is overseeing the application process as well as the launch of the program if it happens.
The three communities officially partnered in 2018 before signing a memorandum of understanding in June 2022 that allows Mass Power Choice to oversee this application process and the launch of the program, if it happens.
Eventually, if the program were to be approved and implemented, Ciccarello said that the three communities would look to implement an umbrella organization where the community aggregation program would be housed along with other environmentally friendly programming that benefits electricity customers.
“Theoretically, the three communities can do more together than individually,” Ciccarello said.