Dupage Policy Journal

According to a recent announcement from the Village of Hinsdale, the area has decided to enter negotiations to adjust the community’s electric rate.

The Village’s collaboration with Nordic Energy Services was approved by Hinsdale residents and initiated in 2012. Since that time, Hinsdale residents have saved a sum of $4.8 million in its electrical aggregation program. This divides into $974 of savings per household.

This electric plan enables municipalities like Hinsdale to use the electric market’s deregulation to make electric rates lower for local residents. Village officials have not yet found another aggregation system that can offer such considerable savings for local residents.

Unfortunately, last winter Nordic informed Hinsdale that the electric rates may increase because of the winter weather. Luckily, however, the increased rates did not go into effect, leaving residents’ electric rates unchanged.

This does not mean that the rates will not change at all: the contract has a clause that accounts for “regulatory events” that may increase the electric rates. There have been a few regulatory events that have caused the rates to rise, such as capacity, transmission and Purchase of Receivables with Consolidated Billing (PORCB) adjustment rates.

In July 2015, the contract with Nordic will expire, and Hinsdale will begin to negotiate new electricity rates.