Council candidate will give electric proposal at meeting

by Erin Senff
Staff Writer

An Athens City Council candidate will present a plan at council's meeting tonight that he says will give more buying power to Athens' electric consumers.

According to the Ohio Revised Code, Ohio underwent electric restructuring after a law was passed by the state legislature in 1999. While the local electric utility will continue to deliver electricity, residents now can choose the company that supplies their electricity. Previously, only one company supplied and delivered electricity to an area.

Ellsworth Holden, a Republican candidate for city council, said he will encourage the city to become an opt-in aggregator. Under this system, the city would organize customers interested in changing their electric provider into a buying group.

Collectively, this group would bargain with suppliers to get better prices, additional benefits, energy management services and energy-use analysis. Not every resident would have to join this group.

"It just makes plain economic sense for us to do it," Holden said.

Holden said he thinks it is a worthwhile opportunity. The residents can do more collectively than individually.

"Three thousand electricity users joined together as one big electricity customer will have a lot more clout in the market place than 3,000 individual customers," Holden said.

He said he plans to remain active in its development even if he is not elected to council, but would leave the specifics to council. If council decides to move forward with his idea, the plan could take several months to implement.

Currently, American Electric Power is the only supplier in Athens. But Holden said he wants to be prepared when competitors come.

Statewide, Ohio's electric market is in a five-year development period, said Shana Gerber, public information officer for the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio.

She said the market still is developing because the programs implemented under the 1999 law went into effect January 1 of this year. Columbus and Northeast Ohio currently have the most choices, and northeastern Ohio has an aggregator group.