PEORIA -- The Illinois General Assembly supposedly is working on ways to lower the sky high electric rates.
Meanwhile state Senator Dave Koehler, in a recent talk to Peoria Democrats, advanced an interesting proposal: cooperative purchases.
The city of Peoria and other entities can today form cooperatives to allow residents to buy electricity from a supplier other than Ameren/CILCO, presumably at rates lower than Ameren is charging. Or a discount deal could be made with Ameren.
Businesses are doing that now, but residential customers are not able to buy individually. A supplier would be enticed by a group sale, Koehler, a Peoria Democrat, said.
Peoria has explored setting up its own power plant on Darst Street, he said, a location near the Greater Peoria Sanitary District. That would be a coal gasification plant to produce electricity, he said.
If that happens, let’s hope strict environmental controls are in place to prohibit emissions.
Cooperatives likely would form only if the rate freeze doesn’t become law, Koehler said. “The freeze is not the solution,” he said.
Re-regulation also won't work, he said, because Ameren has sold off its generating plants to its subsidiaries. They would have to be repurchased at a tremendous cost to the ratepayers, and the regulated rates likely would be as high as the deregulated rates.
Cooperatives for residential users have not yet developed in Illinois because of uncertainty over the freeze and therefore the prices for electricity, he said.
But cooperatives carry extra benefits for their customers. Like rural electric cooperatives, they can be investor owned. They also could eventually produce their own power, he said, as some municipalities, such as Springfield, already do.
That would be a way to put electricity companies in the hands of the rate-paying public, he said.
Koehler also wants to see rate relief for all-electric houses. These houses were promised rate discounts years ago which were suddenly withdrawn.
He predicted that if the rate freeze eventually becomes law, it will generate an immediate federal lawsuit from Ameren, further delaying rate relief.
--Elaine Hopkins
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