Freeholder director Bruce Garganio announced that the Burlington County Board of Chosen Freeholders has established an Energy Aggregation Plan with the potential to substantially decrease utility costs for municipalities, businesses and residents.
“This energy aggregation program allows Burlington County to negotiate a “bulk purchase” of energy supply on behalf of its municipalities, residents and businesses at a lower price than residents currently pay to their electric company,” Garganio said. “This will make electricity less expensive for each individual and business in Burlington County. Typical savings with these plans average about nine percent for residential customers in New Jersey. For Burlington County that means potential savings of approximately $11 million, or nearly $100 a year for participating households.”
“It is important to realize that this plan is voluntary for our municipalities and for our residents,” Garganio said. “Once we receive an aggregate rate, residents in participating towns will have the option to stay with the energy aggregation plan or to opt out to either the standard rate or to a third party provider. In that way this plan not only lowers costs but it also expands consumer choice.”
The Burlington County Bridge Commission will partner with the Freeholders to execute the energy aggregation plan, providing technical and professional support and services.
“This is part of our long standing effort to fight for lower utility costs on behalf of our residents, a fight in which we have had many successes,” Garganio said. “Recently, for example, we as freeholders engaged the BPU in a battle to stop New Jersey American Water from increasing water rates by 20 percent in 23 of our municipalities. We gathered more than 11,000 signatures from residents, and confronted the BPU through the mail and in person. When the smoke had cleared, their bid for a $95 million per year rate increase had been cut to less than a third of that amount.”
“As we role this program out, we will doing extensive outreach to our residents to ensure that they fully understand this opportunity and to answer any questions that they may have,” Garganio said. “But the bottom line is that this is a real and exciting chance to save hard working Burlington County residents some money.”
