Village ponders electric agreement

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Updated: March 11, 2012 8:25AM

Barrington officials are carefully sifting through an agreement with the Northern Illinois Municipal Electric Collaborative to provide consulting services for the village’s electrical aggregation program.

Director of Public Works Dennis Burmeister and Village Attorney Jim Bateman presented a draft agreement at the committee of the whole meeting Monday that outlined provisions under which Barrington would have the collaborative provide its consulting services for the village’s electrical aggregation program.

Shortly following trustees’ approval to add a referendum question on the March 20 ballot that would seek public approval to engage in an electric aggregation program, staff members were asked to search for consultants to help them properly engage in the process.

Talks about aggregation initially began after trustees found that 19 Chicago suburbs had successfully implemented programs that allowed them to bid on and accept lower electricity product costs.

The ability to arrange for companies other than ComEd to supply electricity is a result of deregulation.

Because NIMEC has procured favorable electric rates for the village’s large accounts since 2006, Burmeister suggested Monday that they be the village’s consultant through this newer process.

NIMEC has consulted 15 of the 19 communities currently utilizing aggregation’s lower rates.

“Our rates will be based on our demand, and NIMEC knows what our demand profiles are,” Burmeister said.

The agreement that could be approved by a resolution at the next Village Board meeting would require NIMEC to provide relevant aggregation information to the public in the hearings prior to the election. NIMEC would also train village staff to respond to questions from residents and small retail customers.

Although a new supplier will provide the actual electricity, ComEd will still manage the service and deliver electricity to customers; for this reason, NIMEC would manage data flow from the supplier to ComEd and vice versa to ensure that data is correct between the two.

Bidding power aggregated from the largest sum of communities does not necessarily result in lower electric rates, so an appropriate aggregation number must be determined by a consultant before bidding.

Accordingly, President Karen Darch was concerned that letting NIMEC use the village’s name to market its services to other towns would accrue too high a number of clients.

Burmeister explained that the number of clients would not affect the aggregation number.

“They will seek individual community pricing regardless of the aggregation number used,” Burmeister said. “All communities they use will get their own rate.”

The board will consider a resolution to enter into an agreement with NIMEC at its Village Board meeting Monday.