Things are slowly starting to look brighter for the customers of the city of Columbus’ green-power program.
Over 213,000 Columbus customers who get their electricity from the city’s municipal aggregation program will see the kilowatt-hour (kWh) charge they pay for power drop by over 17% starting this month, following falling wholesale electricity prices.
And potentially by this fall, one of the first new local green generation plants powering the program could be on line, as a massive new 200-megawatt solar farm dedicated to the program west of Circleville nears completion.
“Clean Energy Columbus” customers will see usage costs drop to 6.612 cents per kWh, a rate now locked in through the end of next May. That’s down from 7.99 cents per kWh for the same June-though-May period last year.
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The drop would save a household using an average 900 kilowatt hours per month almost $150 a year.
While AEP’s regulated rates have fallen by about 35% since last summer, the Clean Energy Columbus price is still lower by about another 16.2%. It is also locked in for a year — a good thing if energy prices rise, and a bad thing if they fall.
A Columbus home on the aggregation plan using a typical 900 kilowatt hours per month would see a savings of $115 a year over purchasing power from the regulated AEP utility.
What is electric aggregation?
Ohio allows municipalities to band residents together to negotiate lower utility prices and greener power.
If you were a former AEP customer in the city of Columbus, chances are you’re now a municipal aggregation customer, after city voters in 2020 overwhelmingly approved the plan to automatically enroll all AEP customers in the new green-energy program. Staying out of the program required customers to proactively take steps to opt out — which few did, automatically sending their business to an AEP affiliate called AEP Energy.
AEP Energy’s winning proposal for the Columbus program over four competing suppliers in July 2020 said: “By 2023, AEP Energy will transition the city to be supplied by new, local wind and solar assets. … This will be done by serving 100% of the city’s program load from newly built, local wind and solar projects.”
While AEP Energy won the right to sell a massive load of 1.7 terawatt hours annually, the $1 billion in new local projects didn’t materialize on schedule — and a new contract signed by Mayor Andrew J. Ginther’s administration now calls for the firm supplying 60% locally generated green energy by 2034, the last year of the original contract.
Sometime during the upcoming program year, power is expected to begin flowing from Atlanta Farms Solar in Pickaway County, a sprawling almost 2,300-acre project near the village of Williamsport, about 10 miles west of Circleville.
The solar farm “is the first local Ohio solar to power the program,” and expected to achieve commercial operation later this year, said Erin Beck, director of special projects for the city.
@ReporterBush
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus electric aggregation customers to see rate drop
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