Residents who read the fine print on their electricity bills may notice that the price for the new Community Aggregation Program and that of the regular Rhode Island Energy rate are nearly the same. 

The Rhode Island Energy electricity rate (last resort service if you opted out of the aggregation program) from Oct. 2023 through March 2024 is 17.741 cents per kilowatt hour. While the rate for the Community Aggregation Program from Nov. 2023 through April 2024 is 17.641 cents per kilowatt hour. 

“It is close,” said Jamie Rhodes, a representative from Good Energy, which serves as the town’s consultant. 

The program, which includes Barrington, Providence, Portsmouth, Newport, Narragansett, Central Falls and South Kingstown, ensures that a certain percentage of renewable energy sources are used to supply electricity to local homes. It is also intended to offer a lower electricity rate for the people who enrolled in the program. 

That was the case for the first three months.

According to information provided by Good Energy, program participants collectively saved more than $100,000 for the first three months of the program, and approximately $600,000 in savings were expected by the end of the first six-month period. 

Rhodes said the average household enrolled in the program saved about $7 per month. 

It is not clear how much program participants will save in the next six months. 

“It’s hard to predict what the future holds,” Rhodes said during a recent interview with the Barrington Times. “I don’t know what Rhode Island Energy is going to offer in the future.”

Rhodes said electricity prices were high heading into the winter months. 

Contract change

Members of the Barrington Town Council recently voted 3-1 to amend the community energy aggregation contract, allowing for rate changes to take place every six months or 12 months. The initial agreement called for 12-month rates.

Rhodes told members of the Council that the change would provide more flexibility to the energy provider, NextEra, in obtaining competitive pricing.

Rhodes later explained that if the provider stayed with the 12-month rate changes, energy customers could game the system — they could stay in the energy aggregation program during the winter months when the rates were lower than the competitor, RI Energy, and then drop out of the program in the summer months when the competition offers lower rates. Six-month rate changes would allow the program to be more competitive with RI Energy’s rates during the summer months, Rhodes said.

Renewables

According to information provided by Good Energy, during the first three months of the program participants purchased more than 635 megawatt-hours of voluntary renewable energy, “equivalent to displacing over 480,000 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions.”

“This equates to taking 195 gasoline-powered vehicles off the road since the program launched three months ago,” stated Good Energy.