ELECTRIC AND NATURAL GAS

The City of Portsmouth is placing electric and natural gas aggregation on the November 8th ballot.

Ohio law allows for communities – such as townships, cities, villages, and counties – to form aggregated buying groups to purchase electric and gas generation on behalf of their citizens.  By bringing citizens together, the aggregation gains group buying power and typically can negotiate a better price with the supplier than each aggregation group member could have negotiated individually.

By voting YES for electric and natural gas aggregation, you will allow your local elected officials to purchase electric and natural gas at a competitive rate. Electric and Gas Aggregation provides a competitively priced option for your third-party supply. This is for residents and small businesses that have AEP and Columbia Gas as your utilities. AEP will still be responsible for the delivery of electricity to your home or business. They own the wires and poles that deliver power to you; therefore, they will continue to read your meter and restore power after an outage. Columbia Gas will still be responsible for the delivery of natural gas supply to your home or business. The utility still maintains the pipeline system that deliver power to you and will continue to read your meter and take care of repairs and gas leaks.

First, the governmental aggregation issue must be placed on the ballot and then passed by a majority of the voters.  Once passed, all eligible residents and small businesses in the community will be enrolled and will begin receiving the discounted generation pricing under the program.  Residents do not need to do anything to join the program.  However, anyone who does not want to participate in the program can easily opt out by returning a form, which will be mailed to all eligible members.