MED adds charge to bills
MASSENA — Residential customers of the Massena Electric Department will see a new surcharge added to their bills early next year for an energy efficiency program.
For the average customer, the charge will amount to about $1 per month, according to MED officials.
Commercial and industrial customers will not have to pay the surcharge, though officials said a similar fee could be extended to them in the future.
MED Superintendent Andrew J. McMahon said the utility is obligated to create a more comprehensive energy efficiency program as part of an agreement signed with the New York Power Authority in 2003. In exchange for promising preference-power customers such as MED their low-cost hydropower allocations until 2025, NYPA mandated that each of the 50 municipal utilities they serve create energy efficiency and conservation programs.
To fund such a program, almost one-third of the municipal utilities involved in the 2003 agreement have instituted a systems benefit charge, which the MED board also agreed to do this week.
Investor-owned utilities such as National Grid have assessed a systems benefit charge to their customers for more than a decade, Mr. McMahon said, while gas utilities such as St. Lawrence Gas introduced a similar program in recent years.
Once the charge is added to bills, in January or February, each of MED's 8,100 residential customers will be charged $1 for every 1,000 kilowatts of energy they use. An average residential customer here uses about 1,000 kilowatts per month.
"The money will be put into a fund that will be redistributed to residential customers through energy efficiency programs," Mr. McMahon said. "There are two reasons for doing this — to reduce the amount of energy we consume, specifically the high-cost supplemental energy we're buying more and more of each year, and because it's one of the conditions of the settlement agreement with NYPA."
Utility officials believe the program should raise about $100,000 per year to be used for weatherization programs, home insulation efforts or energy efficiency audits. The money also could be leveraged in the pursuit of additional state or federal energy grants or stimulus money, the superintendent said.
The program's goal will be to invest in residential home improvements that will reduce energy waste, lower the demand for energy across the district and help keep down the cost of energy for all of MED's customers, Mr. McMahon said.
"MED's use of supplemental energy has tripled in the last 10 years and the cost of supplemental energy has doubled in that same time period," Mr. McMahon said. "We believe improving energy efficiency throughout the community will help control our supplemental energy usage and therefore our energy costs."
If the district is able to reduce the amount of energy it uses beyond the 23 megawatts of cheap hydropower they receive from NYPA, the cost of purchasing that supplemental energy will also decrease, Mr. McMahon said.
"We hope the charge will be offset by the savings customers will see when energy use goes down," MED board member Rene Hart said.
