Mt. Prospect says residents may want to turn to ComEd for lower rate

Mount Prospect residents and small commercial customers no longer have a Homefield advantage.

The village announced this week that ComEd's energy rate is currently lower than the village's alternative energy provider, Homefield Energy, under its electrical aggregation program.

ComEd, which remains the electricity delivery provider, regardless of energy supplier, will have a rate that ranges from 6.93 cents to 7.93 cents per kilowatt hour from November until June 2015. The village's aggregation rate under Homefield is 7.935 until August 2016.

ComEd resets its energy charges twice a year and has an additional component, Purchased Electricity Adjustment (PEA) that can change monthly, with price swings up to one cent.

In August, the village chose Homefield Energy under a three-year deal, with a fixed rate of 7.935 through August of 2016 and, after that, a slightly lower rate of 7.499 through August 2017.

Residents are free to leave the aggregation program at any time with no early termination fees. Residents can later rejoin Homefield at no charge, although residents who leave the aggregation program for ComEd would not be able to return to the Homefield Energy aggregation program for a minimum of six months.

Any resident wishing to move back to ComEd should contact Homefield, which is now a Dynegy company, at (866) 694-1262.

"One of the reasons why we chose a three-year contract was so that we have a fixed benchmark price out there, by which to gauge market prices generally," Mayor Arlene Juracek said.

"The rationale was it was really a way for us to gauge our future participation in the marketplace against this fixed price, knowing that we could, as individual customers, go back to ComEd or we could opt out of the program and find another supplier, should ComEd's prices or other supplier prices be lower than the Homefield Energy price."

Juracek said she has chosen to opt out and go with ComEd. She said when she called Homefield Energy, the phone was answered by a live person and the process was "no hassle."

The village said the aggregation program in its first two years produced average resident savings amounting to $357.

Residents can find alternative rates from additional suppliers at www.PlugInIllinois.org.