Hatboro Supports Energy Affordability Through Reform

HATBORO, PA — With PECO withdrawing its proposal for another rate hike, borough officials are calling for energy affordability through reform.

"We’ve just dodged a bullet: PECO caved to considerable political pressure and withdrew its latest filing for yet another rate increase," officials said in a letter to Patch on Thursday. "That's good, but rates are already too high. We need reforms to bring them back down to an affordable level for everyone."

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On Thursday, PECO announced that it was withdrawing a proposal that would have increased rates amid growing concerns from analysts and lawmakers over the impacts of rapidly growing data centers on the electrical grid.

PECO President and CEO David Vahos issued a statement saying keeping utility bills "as low as possible" amid high energy costs was a "top priority."

Hatboro officials explained the reasons why energy costs have skyrocketed in the last year and are still climbing:

• The need for transmission upgrades
• Climate change is causing more extreme storms and damage to poles and wires as well as more frequent outages
• Sharply rising demand from hyperscale data centers
• Tariffs driving up costs of materials
• The War on Iran
• Failure of PJM to add new generation in a timely manner

"We need a number of reforms as soon as possible to begin to solve this set of problems," officials said.

Hatboro officials said they've been working on Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) for several years in order to bring cleaner, more affordable energy to all residents and small businesses in the borough.

The borough nitially petitioned the Public Utility Commission for approval to implement a CCA program together with seven other boroughs across the state.

The PUC felt they did not have the authority to approve our petition and that we needed legislation, officials said.

Community Choice Aggregation is a program, in which one or more local governments acquires electricity from a licensed supplier on behalf of residential and small commercial customers in that municipality.

The local government sets the terms and conditions of the contract. Customers can opt-out at any time without penalty. CCA, already in place in eleven other states, has been able to
provide savings of 10 percent on average. Pennsylvania can easily implement CCA.

"This is a policy whose time has come," officials said.

Anyone seeking more information should contact Mayor Tim Schultz at 215-443-9100 or email at tschultz@myhatboro.org.