CLEVELAND — Rebecca Kempton is just one of some 45,000 Cleveland FirstEnergy electric account holders who are wondering how much her electric bill could be going up next month.
The utility is increasing its per kilowatt hour electric rate from about 5.8 cents to about 12.3 cents starting on June 1; the City of Cleveland reports it's a rate hike that will increase an average $80 monthly electric bill to about $120 dollars.
That's why Kempton, some members of Cleveland city council, and other Cleveland FirstEnergy users are wondering why the city's Office of Sustainability waited until April to take requests for proposals, or RFPs, from electricity vendors until April for its upcoming Community Choice Electric Aggregation program.
Cleveland City Council members said delays in finding a new electric vendor won't have the city's electric aggregation program up and running until August or September, leaving thousands of Cleveland residents and businesses facing the much higher FirstEnergy electric rate for at least three months.
Kempton believes it's a rate increase that should have been avoided and will hurt low-income families and seniors on a fixed income the hardest.
“People are going to fall through the cracks, some people will be able to pay for it and absorb it, but there’s going to be other people who are going to suffer," Kempton said. “It will create some tough choices. Are they going to be keeping their electric on, or buying their medicine, or buying their food? It's that serious. it really comes down to $50 a month that can make a difference in some people’s lives.”
Cleveland city council members Brian Kazy and Rebecca Maurer had major questions for the Cleveland Office of Sustainability during a May 11 city utilities committee meeting, asking Director Sarah O'Keeffe why her department delayed taking RFPs for a new electric vendor for months when it knew that the previous electric aggregation contract with NOPEC stopped in August of 2022.
“We are ourselves are disappointed in not being able to issue this RFP earlier," O'Keefe told the committee. “We certainly can’t go back and issue this RFP two months earlier, which would have been ideal. We absolutely acknowledge that would have been ideal."
Both Kazy and Maurer said the delay has dozens of residents calling their offices, wondering how much higher their bills will be in June and why the city didn't do a better job in protecting them from the upcoming rate hike.
“I just want to know why the administration did not go out for bid to have an aggregator ready to go come January of 2023," Kazy said. “Bottom line, this should have been done months and months and months ago. You should have had this ready to go prior to these electric rates going up because our customers are now extremely confused.”
Kazy told News 5 that since a new electric vendor wasn't found until April, the new aggregation contract won't be up for a vote before Cleveland City Council until August at the earliest.
“So we’re going to have to try to rush this through, and they still, to this day, haven’t gotten us the piece of legislation so we can go over this," Kazy said. “It still has to be introduced, then it has to go through committee, then it has to go through finance and our last day before summer recess is June 5.”
Maurer said she expects complaints from Cleveland FirstEnergy users, who have been left unprotected from the rate hike, will soon be pouring into her office in the coming weeks.
“We’ve haven't seen this hit our wallets yet, but in a couple of weeks, it will, and I’m already getting dozens of calls on this," Maurer said. "It’s already seniors on a fixed income who don’t have the additional cushion to pay a doubled electric bill.”
Currently, city leaders are recommending Cleveland FirstEnergy customers, who have not already switched to another electric supplier, not make a switch now. Maurer said consumers should examine and better understand their current electric bill but should probably not switch and wait for the low electric rates that will come along when the city Community Choice Aggregation program is finally put into action in August or September. Maurer and other city leaders don't believe making a short-term switch to another electric supplier to avoid three months of higher prices will be of any benefit in the long run.
“It could take another billing cycle or two just get on board, so it’s not even clear that people can save money at this point," Maurer said. “As a consumer, take the time, look at your bill, figure out how it works, but right now, you might be between a rock and hard place for the next few months.”
Maurer encouraged those who still wanted to shop electric plans to only use PUCO's "Apples to Apples" web page to shop rates. Maurer urged consumers to pay close attention to contract terms, contract length, monthly fees and cancellation fees that come along with the electric plan offered on the PUCO website.
“Do not sign-up for any energy aggregators who are coming to your door, who set up shop at a shopping center; don’t do that," Maurer said. "The only place that you should be shopping for an energy aggregation contract is on that PUCO website.”
The City of Cleveland issued the following statement in response to our story:
"Law is currently working on the draft legislation for aggregation and will forward to council this afternoon. We appreciate council working together with the administration to allow an accelerated review of the community energy aggregation."
More info is available at City of Cleveland Community Choice Aggregation - Sustainable Cleveland
"We regret that the city administration was not able to issue a community choice program RFP earlier in the year, but we have been successful in selecting a competitively priced program and look forward to working with city council members to ensure residents have that program in place by August."
Until then, energy efficiency and conservation are always useful measures to lower one’s energy consumption and costs while maintaining comfort. Here’s some useful information from FirstEnergy about what residents can do to make their homes more energy efficient.
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