Barrington awards electricity aggregation contract

Barrington Village Manager Jeff Lawler signed an electricity aggregation contract Thursday, expected to shave up to $1.3 million off the $4 million per year the village’s ComEd customers currently pay for their electricity supply.

But supply costs make up only between 60 to 70 percent of a customer’s monthly electric bill. There are still two other components of the bill — distributor costs and government tax rates — which will remain the same.

Nevertheless, village officials were pleased with the payoff of the many months of work that went into the electricity aggregation program — both before and after the March referendum that enabled it.

“We’re happy with the number we got and the savings residents can expect,” Lawler said.

He added that Public Works Director Dennis Burmeister is the most deserving of the kudos — since he did the lion’s share of research on the program.

“It’s probably one of the biggest projects I’ve ever been involved with because we had to learn everything from scratch,” Burmeister said.

The two-year contract was awarded to the low-bidder, Pennsylvania-based MC Squared Energy Services. Its supply rate was 4.739 cents per kilowatt hour, as compared to ComEd’s rate of approximately 8 cents per kilowatt hour.

There remain a few more steps to implement before the new rate is incorporated into customers’ billing cycle. The first and most important is to send a notification to residents informing them that they still have the right to opt out of the village’s aggregation program.

For those that remain, however, the lower supply costs should begin to show up on either their August or September bills, Lawler said.

Barrington has about 3,600 residential electricity accounts, of which only 114 are already receiving power from alternate suppliers on their own.