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6 month status report--20 communities that signed on to Westchester power--are your utility bills go
Release Date: November 14, 2016
Earlier this year Greenburgh and about twenty communities in Westchester approved an agreement with westchesterpower.org to purchase power in bulk. The villages of Hastings, Irvington and Tarrytown also signed on to this agreement.
When we approved the agreement we advised residents who reside in the town that their Con Ed rates could go down. There were no guarantees of savings. One important aspect of this initiative is that prices are fixed for two years. The rates can't go up. If Con Ed rates go up, ours won't. We have a two year protection against rate hikes--which is good. However, rates fluctuate. If Con Ed rates go down ours stays the same during the two year period.
During the past six months utility prices have been low so the savings per customer has not been substantial - very modest. Looking at the August detail Greenburgh totals 11,709,944 kwh for 12,801 accounts, an average of 915 kwh per account for that month. The average savings comes to not quite $3 a month - obviously modest as you say, but If we extrapolate out the total dollars for this period for Greenburgh, calling it $15 an account for the five months, it comes to about $192,000. August is probably higher consumption so maybe its a bit lower than that... but anyway if that was a tax cut one might have reason to feel somewhat pleased. There are months when ratepayers did not save as much.
That could change within the 2 year contract agreement we have--Con Ed rates could go up much more than they have in the past six months.
For more information please click on to
westchesterpower.org website, and it says "rates so far."
I excerpted some of the facts below. The website has more information about the services offered.
Every utility customer (who is not a member of an existing ESCO) in Greenburgh is enrolled in the program but you can always opt out if you'd like by contacting the company. Please copy me if you want to opt out. I continue to believe that ratepayers should stay in the program- everyone has saved a little so far which is better than no savings.
At the time we entered into the agreement, I promised to provide you with periodic status reports and will continue to do so.
PAUL FEINER
THIS IS EXCERPTED FROM THE WESTCHESTERPOWER.ORG WEBSITE
(MORE INFO ON THEIR WEBSITE IF YOU ARE INTERESTED)....
Rates so far
Comparison of CCA fixed rates to variable utility rates
Going on six months into the contracts for fixed-rate supply, analysis shows these have provided a modest savings versus the variable rate utility supply.
These calculations are derived by taking the 1st to the last day of the month as the from-to period for this indicative calculation. The number on your bill will use the rates during the from-to period of your bill, and so will differ in a given month. For the averages, we used half of May since we were not fully enrolled at that time.
In Con Ed territory standard supply (7.381 cents/kwh) has saved an average of about 2/3 of a cent per kwh versus the utility rates and green power (7.681 cents) about 1/3 of a cent on average since the start.
s always when talking about rates, we are obliged to remind our customers that we cannot predict whether our fixed rates will outperform variable utility rates by the end of the contract term. At the same time, it is important to remember that an important value of our fixed rates is the protection against rate hikes.
A Program of Sustainable Westchester and participating municipalities
info@westchesterpower.org
Con Ed customers: (855) 4WC-POWER
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