UPTON – Selectmen Tuesday voted to approve the energy aggregation plan that will offer residents discounted electricity rates.
Residents initially voted to participate in electricity aggregation at a Town Meeting a couple of years ago. In February, selectmen entered into a consultant agreement with Colonial Power Group, agreeing to allow the group to manage Upton’s aggregation, which will provide discounted energy to participating residents.
According to the aggregation plan, Colonial is able to offer discounted electricity by combining the “buying power of about 7,500 consumers.” Residents can choose to opt in or out of the program at any time without any penalty or delay.
Selectmen Chairman Jim Brochu said joining the aggregation is an 11-step process, and the town is currently on step four, which he said is a “memorandum of understanding that we are going to file with the state that the town of Upton is interested in pursuing this particular path.”
Brochu said the board has been getting emails from residents curious about how what type of power – “green,” which is energy efficient, or “brown,” which isn’t – they will be able to purchase.
Eventually, the town will be able to decide on the formula for green power versus brown power, but Brochu said they are not yet at that step.
“We’re not at that point right now where we’re making that decision as far as what percentage of power or what type of power,” Brochu said, but once they are, there will be a public hearing to “seek input on that.”
The decision that was made Tuesday, he said, was simply to “go forward with this particular opportunity that the taxpayers and the citizens in Upton can benefit from purchasing their power from a cheaper and more inexpensive power source.”
Corin Cook can be reached at ccook@wickedlocal.com or 508-634-7521. Follow her on Twitter @corincook_MDN.