NOPEC is an energy aggregator, bringing a group of customers together to buy in bulk in an effort to negotiate benefits and cost savings. The organization has 243 Ohio communities as members.
Costanzo said the price increase comes from the electric grid supplier.
Costanzo urged customers to make small changes to save money, including turning off power strips and other electronics not in use to avoid “phantom electricity,” adjusting programmable thermostats while out of the house and caulking windows and doors.
But Ohio energy customers can also use the state’s “apples to apples” energy choice website, energychoice.ohio.gov, to compare rates and offers from different suppliers to get a better deal. As of Thursday, there were multiple 12-month electric supply offers at 0.0789 per kilowatt hour, with no monthly fee or early termination fee.
Those are energy supply costs, as distribution and transmission rates are determined by the local utility company.
PJM Interconnection, the regional electric grid operator, saw a massive increase from $29.70 to $300 in its latest capacity auction, a result of many factors, according to Costanzo. Capacity market participants offer power supply to the market in response to demand, and with more demand comes higher costs.
“The capacity auction is simply to make sure that on those hottest days of the year that there is enough electricity produced to make sure that we don’t have a blackout,” Costanzo said. “So there’s usually four or five days a year that they will gauge what the actual load is.”
Costanzo pointed to data centers using a lot more electricity with artificial intelligence, coal plants closing and not enough new generation with solar plants.
“When I look up on my phone and I do a Google search, I use X amount of energy. When I do that same search on ChatGPT, it’s 12 times the amount of energy,” Costanzo said.
PJM capped the next auction at $350.
“I say that is going to be temporary because when you have an auction, if you have a cap, eventually those generators will just go to other markets,” Costanzo said.
PJM Board Chair Mark Takahashi warned in a Dec. 9 letter to stakeholders that the system “could see a capacity shortage as soon as the 2026/27 delivery year.” He wrote that efforts to bring capacity online more quickly “through the interconnection queue” and ensuring “price signals accurately reflect current supply-demand fundamentals” would address “a generational change in our industry.”
Springfield has 11,497 households in NOPEC’s aggregation program. The aggregator automatically enrolls customers but is cancellable at any time, Costanzo said.
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