Large companies are able to negotiate lower electricity and gas rates based on volume, but small businesses usually have to take what they’re offered. Yesterday, the city of Boston unveiled an interesting idea for lowering energy costs for small business. The city of Boston is looking at creating a pool of small businesses to negotiate bulk electricity and gas rates.
The city would create the pool of at least 200 businesses, but wouldn’t be involved in the operations. The businesses would pay the power companies directly and the energy broker would be paid as a percentage of the savings. The city wouldn’t pay anything on an ongoing basis.
Now, if only I could form one of those buying pools and get discounted power to run my air conditioner this summer.
3 Comments
It sounds good, but I hope it goes better than all the failed proposals for small businesses to band together in pools and buy health insurance.
In rural areas there is even something better – Community Wind. The idea (K-State) is to build a local wind farm in an area controlled by the members of a sort of cooperative. Then, rather than just buying their power together, they actually make it.
K-State – through its existing extension program – has been working in this area.
Hey, I wonder if some kind of similar shared arrangement could be organized for residential natural gas users. I notice my natural gas bills have been increasing. Or to be more accurate, my “EPP settlement amount” after payment of my monthly flat fee has been increasing … so I have to pay several hundred more dollars to “catch up.”
I went back and analyzed my bills over the past year. It appears my usage is remaining fairly constant for similar months give or take a little for different weather. The difference appears to be from higher costs Kansas Gas Service is paying for the natural gas. Is anybody trying to put the brakes on this?
I would like to know more about this purchase arrangement. Who does Kansas Natural Gas purchase the natural gas from … is it directly from the producer? Or is a middle man in the picture? Does our natural gas come from the Hugoton gas fields in southwestern Kansas? Are various electrical power companies competing with us residential users for this natural gas thereby driving the costs up?
Can we trust and depend on our natural gas supplier, in my case Kansas Gas Service Co., a subsidiary of Oneok Company in Oklahoma, to actually try to give us a good deal? Does this natural gas monopoly come under the surveillance of our Kansas Utilities Commission or whatever its called?
Anybody know anything about this?