by Katie Rygg
Are you an RG&E customer for your electricity? Do you live in Penfield?
If so, you should have heard from the town that you will be automatically enrolled in a fully vetted and approved Community Choice Aggregation program that will take effect at the first meter read after December 8th, 2021. You may opt out of this program at any time for any reason without penalty - and you can opt in or opt up to 100% renewable at any time. But without any effort, starting in January, you’re in and there are great reasons to stay:
The default program is “Penfield Green” and is 50% renewably sourced energy. Our current RG&E mix is only 7% renewable. The energy supplier, Constellation NewEnergy, uses Low Impact Hydroelectric in NY State for its renewable credits. Note that the CCA program only changes the supply and not the delivery of your electricity (still RG&E). The delivery fees will stay the same. More on this later.
The Penfield Green rate is $0.05733/kWh. This is just a bit better than RG&E has done for individual residents over the 3 month look-back that the town specified ($0.0576/kWh).
Prices for everything are going up. Inflation is at a 30 year high. Within the last few months, we’ve heard that oil and gas prices will be high this winter. Going with Penfield Green means you are locked into this lower price through what looks like an upward trend for those not in the program.
For a few extra dollars each month, you can opt-up to Penfield 100. This means that you will get 100% renewably sourced electricity at a fixed rate of $0.06443 for 24 months. Sign up here.
This is not a sketchy ESCO plan that pulls you in with low rates only to bite you down the road. This has been fully approved by the state of NY, the NY Association of Towns, the NY Conference of Mayors, the Town Board of Penfield, their lawyers, Penfield’s Energy and Environmental Advisory Committee, Town Engineers, and Color Penfield Green.
So let’s take a look at an electricity bill
We looked at a Penfield resident’s October electricity bill to compare prices for the Penfield Green and Penfield 100.
As you can see, this household used 692 kWh for the month. According to the US Energy Information Administration, the 2020 average electricity consumption for a US residential utility customer was 893 kWh per month.
The total bill - with the usual RG&E mix (7% renewables) was $99.36.
In the CCA program, the delivery charges all stay the same. RG&E is still responsible for getting electricity to the house and maintaining all of the wires and the grid. We pay them quite a bit for this service.
What changes with CCA is that we no longer pay RG&E for the supply. Starting in December, there will be lines for Constellation NewEnergy’s supply charge. The RG&E Supply and Merchant Function charges will be replaced by only the Constellation Supply charges. So let’s take a look at what the two CCA programs would do for this resident:
For the additional price of a coffee and a doughnut each month, your home can be powered by 100% carbon-free electricity. Please consider opting up to Penfield 100. Sign up here.
Do you still have questions?
Email Good Energy here: info@penfieldcca.com or call (585) 310-0236. You will likely get voicemail but they will get back to you.
Thank you to Bob Kanauer, Penfield EEAC, for inspiring this article!