SAUGUS – Lynnette Alameddine in Saugus presented at the Board of Selectmen meeting on Thursday night and proposed changing the electricity supplier of the town.
As of now, the electricity supplier of Saugus is National Grid. The rate currently is 11.49 cents per kWh and will be raised to 33.81 cents per kWh on Nov. 1. With a 194 percent increase in the electricity rate, Alameddine proposed Saugus to petition to have NextEra Energy Services be the electrical supplier. Melrose as well as other cities and towns have done this to keep electricity costs down.
NextEra Energy does not supply Saugus, but it will be able to if the town petitions it to do so. The City of Melrose has locked in a price of 11.172 cents per kWh until November 2024, and the consumer can come and go as they please without penalty as most supply companies do, according to Alameddine.
“We need to act quickly about our electric supplier,” said Alameddine, “we need to be proactive in our town.”
Currently there are several towns and cities under the Massachusetts Community Choice Aggregation Program, including Melrose and Swampscott. For utilities, National Grid and Eversource will continue to be the point of contract for repair, delivery and billing; according to the explanation of the aggregation program on a NextEra Energy site.
According to Anthony Cogliano, Chairman of the board of selectmen, the town and the town manager were working with a consultant on the feasibility of switching the electricity supplier early last month. Some review has started, and preliminary negotiations on the contract have been done.
Alameddine said the petition can be found at https://www.nexteraenergyservices.com/aggregations/massachusetts. She encourages town citizens to be onboard with the lower cost energy supplier.
Sylvia Chen can be reached at [email protected]
