Beverly To Push For Municipal Electric Program Amid Price Spike

BEVERLY, MA — Beverly is seeking to push the state Department of Public Utilities to approve its plan to create a municipal electricity aggregation program amid expected soaring prices from National Grid this winter.

Beverly announced the formation of the Beverly Community Electric Program more than a year ago but is awaiting state action on the purchasing plan that would allow Beverly residents to obtain electricity through a collective buying program designed to lower prices and aid sustainability goals.

"We actually submitted that letter (to the state DPU) raising concerns about the level of increase that Grid has requested in their filing with the DPU," Beverly Mayor Mike Cahill said at Monday night's City Council meeting. "We are really urging the DPU to act. We put forward an application to the plan to the state to do a community choice aggregation on electricity (in February 2021).

"So they have been sitting on it for over a year and a half."

National Grid said late last month it will also ask the state to double supply rates this winter: from last winter's 14.82 cents per kilowatt-hour rate to 33.89 cents. National Grid says natural gas costs are also driving its rate increase because fossil fuel is the main energy source for the region's electrical grid.

The increase will likely take place on Nov. 1.

State law allows individual cities and towns to buy electricity in bulk and sell it to residents. Otherwise, you default to National Grid as your supplier in Beverly — and that means you pay the much higher National Grid supply rates.

The savings can be dramatic.

Under Marlborough's municipal aggregation program, for instance, residents can pay an electricity supply rate of about 9.3 cents per kilowatt-hour compared to the 33 cents per kilowatt-hour rate National Grid will jump to on Nov. 1.

"They made a statement in the summer that they would be taking on those applications and acting on them in the fall," Cahill said of the DPU. "They haven't done it yet so we just put the letter in to say: 'Please do it now.' Because we need a little bit of time (to implement it). There is a process to getting to a bid.

"The hope is that in going through that community choice aggregation process we'll be able to realize some savings on the rates for Beverly residents and ... anybody who doesn't already have an individual plan. And that we would do better by that bid than what (National Grid) are trying to get passed (as an increase) through the DPU."

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)