Joliet electricity offer in the mail
By Bob Okon bokon@stmedianetwork.com December 28, 2012 3:22PM
Updated: January 2, 2013 9:30PM
Joliet residents and small businesses have until Jan. 15 to sign up for a city-sponsored offering of discounted electricity rates.
The city announced Friday that letters will be in the mail in the next few days offering a 33 percent discount on electricity from the current ComEd rate.
Joliet has joined the buying cooperative organized by the Will County Governmental League, which includes 21 municipalities. The group will buy electricity from FirstEnergy Solutions instead of ComEd.
ComEd will continue to provide delivery, maintenance and repair services to those who sign up for the city-sponsored program. First Energy will only be supplying the electricity itself, and the discount will only apply to the supply portion of the electric bill.
“Bills will continue to come from ComEd with FirstEnergy being listed as the supplier on the bill,” City Manager Thomas Thanas said in the written statement announcing the Jan. 15 deadline.
Once people get the letter in the mail, they can fill out the reply form or call (877) 635-0494 if they want to sign up for the discount program.
The program was made possible by a change in Illinois law allowing local governments to form electric aggregation groups that bundle their residents and businesses into buying groups to obtain energy at lower cost. Joliet voters turned down a referendum in March that would have automatically put them into the Will County Governmental League buying group. But Joliet and other communities later created an opt-in program for people in their communities who want to join the group.
While businesses and other organizations also can sing up for the opt-in program, non-residential customers must use less than 15,000 kilowatt hours of electricity a year to participate.
A number of electrical suppliers also have been offering energy to individual consumers at rates discounted from the current ComEd rate. Those companies have been soliciting by mail and by phone.
People will only get notice by mail of the city of Joliet program. The letter will carry the city of Joliet seal to distinguish it from other solicitation offers. The city also plans to post a copy of the letter on its website,
www.cityofjoliet.info.
