Dayton residents nearly a decade ago voted in favor of allowing the city to start an energy aggregation program.
Ohio consumers can choose their electricity generation suppliers — i.e., where their energy comes from.
Under aggregation, Dayton negotiates with suppliers on behalf of residents, nonprofits and small businesses as a bulk purchaser to try to get them the lowest possible rates.
AES Ohio, formerly DP&L, remains the local electricity utility for customers in program, and the company will continue to deliver the electricity and maintain and repair poles and wires.
Dayton selected the Sustainable Ohio Public Energy Council (SOPEC) to be the broker that will procure electricity for city customers, which will come from out-of-state hydro power, which is 100% renewable energy, officials said.
AEP Energy will be the supplier.
The aggregation program is opt-out, which means residents and small businesses need to take action and provide notice if they do not wish to participate and instead want their energy from a different supplier.
Letters from AEP Energy and SOPEC will be mailed out to residents and small businesses later this month about the program.
“We highly, highly anticipate residents will save money,” Maloney said.
Dayton had an aggregation program between 2016 and 2018, and about 20,000 electric customers took part.
But the program was suspended because of changes in the energy market that meant it no longer was saving residents money, said Dayton City Manager Shelley Dickstein.
The program is expected to resume June 1. Customers can opt out of the program at any time.
“This is a culmination of a decade of work,” said Dayton City Commissioner Matt Joseph. “We tried it once — it didn’t save our residents the money we thought it would.”
He continued, “Now here we are: We are able to offer our residents the opportunity, with a 99.9% likelihood, to save quite a bit of money on their energy bills and basically they have to do nothing.”
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