After a long delay, the Commonwealth’s Department of Public Utilities approved Acton’s Community Choice (electricity) Aggregation plan, Acton Power Choice!
The old description still applies: http://www.acton-ma.gov/powerchoice (except for the launch date).
As a summary, the Acton Power Choice program will bring to most electricity customers in Acton a new set of choices for their electricity supply. The Town, in collaboration with Peregrine Energy Group (and a dash of influence from Green Acton), designed the program and put out an RFP (Request for Proposals) for companies interested in becoming the program’s electricity supplier. Acton Power Choice will offer two options to local electricity users.
Seven companies bid for Acton’s contract. The chosen bidder was Dynegy; the initial contract period will be 24 months, after which time the Town can create a new contract that’s most advantageous. The design of Acton’s program offers two electricity sourcing options.
(1) The “default” option will feature an additional 5% Class I Massachusetts RECs on top of the mandatory Massachusetts RPS (Renewable Portfolio Standard, which is scheduled to go up by 1% each year) 12% Class I MA RECs , for a total of 17% renewable sourcing in 2017. Pricing for this “default” option will be 10.720 cents / kWh. Customers would pay this amount plus the usual delivery charge and monthly fixed fee. The Eversource basic rate, starting July 1, will be 10.759 cents / kWh. This means that the default Acton Power Choice rate will be less than the Eversource rate — even the summer rate (which is typically lower than the wintertime rate). So: significantly more renewable sourcing than the Eversource offering, and cheaper!
(2) There will also be a 100% renewable (“green”) option. This will be built with 100% Class I MA RECs and priced at 12.7 cents/ kWh, just under 2 cents more than both the default price and the Eversource price. As Green Acton works with Peregrine, we will have a lot more information with which to explain the program and calculate potential electric bills under both the default plan and the 100% green plan. Green Acton expects to have an important role in explaining and encouraging people to sign up for the 100% green option. Peregrine and Town staff are starting to work on the roll-out, and are currently estimating on a start date of late September or early October.
During the past few months, some people have been receiving misleading snail mail letters, email offers, and phone solicitations about renewable electricity that may look (or sound) like they are from some vaguely official-sounding agency. The official notices about the real Acton Power Choice program won’t be going out until late summer or early fall.
Green Acton is very excited about Acton Power Choice! We will be sharing information on the program, and will be sure to post the official letters about the program on the Green Acton website.