The North Aurora Village Board has approved joining a regional electricity conservation program that could earn the village $40,000 or more over the next three years.
“I went inside and outside with this thing, because it seemed too good to be true. But it’s real,” asserted North Aurora Water Superintendent Paul Young.
Energy Curtailment Specialists of Buffalo, New York, is contracting with the village to reduce the amount of electricity it takes from Commonwealth Edison’s power grid during “capacity emergencies,” such as during very hot days, that might otherwise cause electricity brownouts or blackouts, Young explained.
North Aurora qualifies to join the program because it maintains emergency generators at two wells and two water treatment plants, he added.
If electricity demand threatens to overwhelm the power grid, ECS will contact Water Department officials to request a power use reduction. At that point, staff will turn on the generators and use them to run water pumping and treatment operations until ECS confirms that the demand problem has passed.
No ECS electricity reduction partner will have to take equipment off the grid for longer than six hours at a time, Young said.
“All we have to do is stock enough fuel to run the generators for six hours, and we already do that,” he noted.
The power grid protection program will run from May 1 to Sept. 30 each year.
ECS will pay North Aurora a retainer for each season in which it participates, plus 85 percent of the prevailing market price per kilowatt hour for the amount of electricity it doesn’t use during a declared demand crisis. That amount could be more than $40,000 over a three-year period.
“I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t do this,” said Village President Dale Berman.
Denise Linke is a freelance reporter