Saugerties considers renewable energy
Town Board member have begun the process of determining whether or not to move forward with what would move Central Hudson customers to renewable sources of electricity.
The Town Board reviewed community choice aggregation electricity purchasing during a video conference meeting Wednesday, when Supervisor Fred Costello said the town is getting ready to select a company to administer the program.
“If Saugerties were to partner with our neighbors and form a consortium of sorts to purchase energy, we could ... offer some savings and use a cleaner source of energy,” he said.
“There’s a really unique opportunity as we move forward in trying to make our (carbon) footprint smaller and be more sensitive to the climate,” Costello said. “We also have the opportunity to save money on behalf of our residents as well.”
Information was not provided on the amount of money that would be saved under the program, which would allow customers to opt out of the town program and stay with Central Hudson’s choice of electricity providers.
A year ago, board members adopted a law allowing the town to decide which company should be the default electricity provider for residential and small business customers. But the town has yet to move forward in determining which group to join to take advantage of the bulk purchases necessary to save money.
Consultant Jeffrey Domanski of Joule Community Power said the ability to get the best deal comes from having between 25,000 to 50,000 meters guaranteed to a specific electricity producer.
“It’s not ... that the more meters you attach to a program the better it is,” he said. “When they launched ... the Westchester (County) program, there was more than 100,000 meters associated there . ... It was intimidating to a number of suppliers to bid on an aggregation that big.”
Officials previously noted the town has about 8,000 meters that could participate in the program.
Candidate firms being considered as administrators for the program include Joule Community Power, Good Energy, and Mega Energy, Costello said after the meeting.
“We may (decide) at our next opportunity,” he said. “I don’t know that we want to wait until August. In the event there’s a special meeting or occasion for the board to get together we can do it then.”