For reference, current rates are 7.96 cents for renewable and 7.71 for standard supply, for both residential and commercial. In sum, we - Beat our target significantly.
- Brought in residential a quarter cent lower than the 7.65 cent target which was based on the best 1 year indicative price.
- Obtained a significant additional discount for our small commercial customers of almost another third of a cent lower than the residential rate.
- Will have green rates lower than our current standard rate.
On the process side we - Pushed the auction tool to its limits, with hundreds of bids submitted during the three and a half hour event.
- Proved again the tremendous value in this open and transparent platform.
- Saw these newly qualified ESCOs push Constellation to where final reductions were down to reductions of hundredths of a cent.
- Got to test out our questions about whether there could be utility in smaller groupings.
We ran a total of 14 auctions for scenarios which included the whole load, the whole load split residential/commercial, and accounts split up into 4 regions, each with about a quarter of the accounts. Our "price not to exceed" was 7.65 cents, and unlike the NYSEG bid where we ended up with only one bid under the cap at the very end, we had several bidders playing aggressively under 7.65 in every auction. How we homed in on the 18 month, whole load split residential and commercial numbers scenario - The 18 month offer was only .065 cents (65 hundredths of a cent) higher than the 12 month offer in this scenario - 7.405 vs 7.340 cents.
- The average of the 18 month offers in the 4-region split scenario was actually a tiny bit higher - 7.410
- One of the 4-region 12 month numbers was a little better at 7.250 (0.16 cents better), but the average of the 4 was 7.321, again only 0.084 cents better.
- This split of residential and commercial for the whole load yielded essentially the same price for residential as for the whole load combined scenario, but exposed an attractive commercial price.
So we deemed this fractional difference vs 12 months to be well worth it as it got us an additional half year. A new participant in our RFPs, Indra Energy, provided those somewhat lower 12 month numbers. While we'd be very happy to "train" a new supplier if we were seeing significant price improvement, the gap was minimal and there is some non-trivial value in going with Constellation in the reduction of the confusion that comes with changing the ESCO on the bill and the assurance of a smooth transition to the new contract. We had only one municipal official take us up on the offer to join us on Zoom to watch the auctions, but that Council Member noted that they found it quite exciting. Now comes the scramble of the post-award tasks - assembling the contracts and getting them to your municipalities for signature, getting on agendas for the mandatory post-award information session, updating the notification letters and getting them through DPS, working with our Communications Director Maria Genovesi to prepare supplementary communications to support the outreach during that period etc. You'll hear from one of the team (Jasmine, Carmen, Cathy and/or Lauren) over the next few days about arranging for these next steps. Many thanks to all of your support through this process. Our Westchester Power communities continue to lead the way to a clean energy future, opening a dialogue for the many other exciting and important initiatives we're building, and setting out important guideposts for the many communities that are following our model. Dan Welsh |
