Feb. 17—Property owners may have experienced sticker shock across Ohio as tax increases impacted their pocketbooks.

But residents in Fairfield ― and other communities that voted to approve electric aggregation ― should see what Public Utilities Director Adam Sackenheim calls “real savings” come May.

“Real estate and property taxes are going up, so hopefully for most of our residents, this aggregated energy discount is going to help maybe temper that sting just a little bit,” Sackenheim said. “It’s real savings, significant savings in my opinion.”

This past November, Fairfield residents supported the city to seek both electric and natural gas aggregation options. Fairfield contracted with Energy Alliances to help handle the request for proposal process and received three bids. This month, Dynegy Energy was selected as “a clear winner” with the lowest energy rate, said Rich Surace, COO of Energy Alliances.

Fairfield City Council made it official Monday, selecting Dynegy Energy as the city’s electric aggregation supplier.

“It’s a lot lower where we thought they would be, and they’re a lot lower than what prices were four or five months ago,” said Surace.

The majority of Fairfield residents are eligible for aggregation and do not have to do anything, said Sackenheim. They can opt out if they choose to stay with the Duke Energy rate. An opt-out mailer will be sent to eligible residential accounts.

This new rate will begin in April, which will be reflected in the May bill.

Some residents cannot participate in the aggregation as they are with another alternate supplier to Duke Energy or are enrolled in the Percentage of Income Payment Plan (PIPP).

The new Dynegy Energy rate will be 6.19 cents per kWH, and includes a 50% renewable investment, and Surace said that means half the energy would be offset through the purchase of renewable energy products. The rate is more than 3.5 cents cheaper than what Duke’s supply rate is projected to be, according to Surace.

“In talking with the team, I believe that’s in line with what you’re trying to do with sustainability goals here and at a very fair price,” he said, referencing the city’s sustainability plan that is to be presented to Fairfield City Council as early as next month.

Highlighting the savings, Sackenheim used two real electric bills as examples. The first was from Fairfield City Manager Scott Timmer, whose house uses about 1,000 kWH per month. Under the new Dynegy rate, he would have saved more than $420 over the past 12 months.

Sackenheim used his bill as a second example. His household uses around 1,750 kWH a month ― in large part due to his three teenage boys who frequently leave lights on ― and would have seen bigger savings, nearly $740 over the past year, under the new rate.

While aggregation changes the company providing the energy generation, Duke Energy would still be the distributor of that energy, and the electric company would also still maintain the lines, respond to emergencies and be the one to call for outages or metering issues.

“Aggregation does not impact distribution costs,” Sackenheim said. “What aggregation impacts is generation; where the electricity is sourced from, where it’s generated from, and that’s where aggregation is going to have a big impact for our residents.”

Fairfield will eventually do the same thing for natural gas aggregation but wanted to roll out the electric aggregation first as this is where residents will see bigger savings.