In the energy field, who we receive our power from and what we receive may soon be our choice. In fact, some customers are already in the driver’s seat through something called ­community choice aggregation (CCA). Across the country, consumers are challenging the traditional power-­delivery market, demanding cleaner energy, independent power scenarios and a responsive public utility. This shift opens opportunities for electrical contractors (ECs) to offer these solutions.


California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio and Rhode Island currently allow local governments to aggregate the electricity loads of residents, businesses and municipal facilities. Under such a program, the utilities continue to handle power transmission and distribution, grid and line maintenance and customer billing. However, the aggregator that buys the power often negotiates a noticeably cheaper rate for its customers. 


Shawn Marshall serves as the director of LEAN Energy US (Local Energy Aggregation Network), a California-based nonprofit working to identify and assist states where community utility aggregation makes sense.


“When you look at CCAs as a trend, it’s interesting,” she said. “Nationally, I’d say they are slowly emerging. At the local level, however, the potential is there for CCAs to be rapidly transformational. Look at Illinois, where 80 percent of the households are now supported by CCAs.”


Marshall added that CCAs can be disruptive and have their challenges, as Illinois found; there, rate savings have diminished. Customers in Illinois were enjoying 20–35 percent rate savings until 2013.


“The challenge is helping local governments understand the value of aggregation beyond cost saving,” she said. 


That added value is where electrical contractors (ECs) can play a role.


Marshall said that CCAs also give ratepayers a choice in which sources of energy to use and put on the grid. They also deliver better control of the electrical load. Beyond local governments, she thinks the business community, including ECs, should better understand aggregation.


“One could surmise that CCAs don’t have as big an impact on electrical contractors,” Marshall said. “Utilities are known to take care of their own infrastructure [poles and wires]. The added opportunity, if done right, is a CCA contract with independent power producers and related resource players at the local level. They create a diversified market for construction and for contractors equipped to participate in these new power projects.”


Suddenly a market emerges around CCAs with local delivery channels for new and existing energy programs, such as net energy metering, energy-efficiency retrofits, and distributed rooftop and community-shared solar, wind and demand-response technologies. Progressive CCAs and utilities can open this up.


“If you already do utility work, CCA-driven utility projects could also logically come your way,” Marshall said. “Electric vehicle [EV] charging stations might be in the mix, too.”


Working together


“A large utility and grass-roots community approach can work, but you have to chart a path together that benefits both parties,” said Roger Wilkens, executive director, Southeast Ohio Power Energy Council (SOPEC). “It’s a mutual learning process.”


SOPEC is described as a “Council of Governments” representing Ohio locales—such as the city of Athens, Athens County and county villages led by Amesville—that together purchase power. The combined purchasing power enables SOPEC to negotiate reasonably priced electricity and other energy services. An estimated 17,000 consumers participate. With its incumbent utility, it has negotiated a 28 percent rate reduction for SOPEC customers who lock into a three-year contract. Like any CCA, the larger the purchasing pool, the better the negotiation and the rate.


“We currently have two contracts,” Wilkens said. “We buy power at a discounted price from American Electric Power [AEP], but we also have a contract with Empower Gas and Electric out of Columbus that is helping us create and manage an energy-­efficiency program for our customers. Both parties work together for us.” 


Empower bills itself as “brand-new kind of energy utility that sees energy aggregation as a catalyst for community growth.”


Wilkens also works to cultivate a pool of qualified ECs.


“We have been engaging electrical contractors to help us in an ongoing way with Empower and our overall energy-­efficiency program,” Wilkens said. “We are already getting phone calls from area residents who want to participate and direct them to qualified contractors.”


SOPEC’s cousin, NOPEC, is the nation’s largest CCA with 500,000 customers in 10 northeastern Ohio counties. CSAs are also forming within Ohio cities, including Cincinnati, Cleveland and Columbus.


The lure of green power


Many CCAs directly tackle reducing greenhouse gas emissions. As is the case with most CCAs, consumers can “opt-in” to cleaner power. Ohio’s SOPEC is using solar-power generation and limited small hydro to offer a green-energy supply to its customers. Illinois CCAs also provide an option for consumers to greenwash their energy supply. Some of it comes from locally sourced wind and solar, and some is generated out of state represented by renewable energy certificates. 


Other areas are also in the mix. Chicago is currently the largest power aggregator in the country. Formed in 1997, Cape Light Compact in Massachusetts is the longest running CCA in the country. It has partnered with Cape & Vineyard Electric Coop on more than 36 megawatts (MW) of new solar built on multiple sites throughout Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.


When it comes to offering green power, California is particularly aggressive. LEAN calls it the “first climate-driven CCA in the nation.” It estimates the state provides 67 percent greenhouse-gas-free power and offers net metering. Since 2011, it has contracted for nearly 60 MW of new solar, wind, biomass and landfill gas energy. In addition to Marin County and the City of Richmond, the state has CCAs in Monterey Bay (Monterey/­Santa Cruz); CCAs certified in Sonoma and San Francisco; and a number of localities exploring CCAs in the East Bay area, San Diego and northern Yolo County. 


Interestingly, California remains a regulated power state, unlike other states with CCAs that operate in a deregulated, retail energy marketplace. Regulated typically looks like one product from one power provider. Yet innovation and a public voice have allowed CCA to flourish in California.


Marin Clean Energy, a CCA based in San Rafael, Calif., has been providing power to Marin County since 2010. 


“In 2002, HB117 introduced and enabled community choice in our state,” said Dawn Weisz, CEO, Marin Clean Energy (MCE). “The public wanted cleaner power. They made their voice heard at the ballot box.”


Today, MCE taps into an array of clean-power sources, giving its customer options, such as a 50 percent clean-energy delivery or 100 percent for an added dollar a day.


“Being a not-for-profit, we don’t have shareholders,” Weisz said. “As such, we’re not viewed as a competitor to Pacific Gas and Electric. CCAs do have to pay a departing load charge. Nonetheless, our rates are kept competitive while making the product as renewable as possible. Long-term power-purchase agreements help us succeed.”


Creating jobs


According to Weisz, the CCA movement in California has also been a job boon for energy generators and those constructing renewable supply in the state.


“In less than three years, 1,800 jobs have been generated because of aggregated power providers,” she said.


Weisz noted that $513 million is committed to renewable-energy projects in California well into 2016. Marin and its developers completed a 20­-MW solar facility last December. A 23-MW solar installation was scheduled for April, followed by a 99-MW wind project in July.


“It’s our developers and the job pool they generate that touch electrical contractors in our state and our CCA,” Weisz said. “For CCAs with energy-efficiency programs, contractors might find work in building energy audits or retrofit projects. MCE is involved in large, multifamily retrofits, programs for small business and commercial. We also have created our own demand-response programs. We see the utility following suit on some of our creativity, which only adds to the possible job activity for contractors.”


Letting creativity flow


Within the framework of CCA is an endless opportunity for creativity. SOPEC is one example.


“Our latest project is a 3-MW solar farm being built on a reclaimed landfill,” Wilkens said. “We are also looking at our aggregation contract to provide some organization support, engineering and financing for community solar gardens. Community solar could be rooftop PV or another solar array acting as a microgrid placed close to a large energy user, such as a school.”


Led by an idea incubated through Wilkens’ separate non-profit Center for the Creation of Cooperation, a pilot microgrid project is underway in alliance with SOPEC.


“We’re scouting locations to site a bank of solar panels for half a dozen households in southeastern Ohio at the edge of Appalachia,” he said. “[For our] low-income residents, we want to provide a power solution that is clean, economic and viable. Most microgrids are at a community college or larger scale. The idea here is creating a micro microgrid. We are investigating how microgrid power can share a space within CCA and be interrelated. This is another opportunity we share with qualified area ECs. We hope to develop a model that can be replicated elsewhere.”


For, SOPEC, MCE and others, negotiating a great electrical rate for its customers with the incumbent utility is just one goal. Expanding efforts to energy-efficiency programs and providing alternative power are now equal, if not stronger, drivers. They are already influencing the landscape for the utility of tomorrow.


“CCA drives jobs,” Marshall said. “It pays to know if they are in your market.”