Arlington, Texas, has successfully negotiated a nine-year fixed-price retail electricity supply contract with the assistance of Priority Power Management (PPM), a management and consulting firm that specializes in meeting the needs of large commercial, industrial, and government customers.
The city is moving its business to TXU Energy, a subsidiary of Energy Future Holdings; previously, Arlington had been a long-time customer of the Texas Coalition for Affordable Power.
We work closely with our customers to deliver customized solutions that go well beyond a simple aggregated service,” said TXU Vice President for Business Gabe Castro, in heralding the deal.
Arlington over 72.6 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity annually, across 796 electricity accounts. That’s the same as about 5,000 average Texas homes, according to TXU.
“Historically low electricity prices make this an ideal time for cities and other commercial consumers to lock in savings and long-term budget certainty, which helps them to be great stewards of the tax dollars they manage,” said Castro.
The new contract locks in a fixed electricity price for the city that will deliver an estimated $23.5 million (32.8 percent) in total electricity cost savings over the term. As an added bonus, the contract also includes $150,000 of rebates available to Arlington, to partially offset investments in energy efficiency upgrades.
“We undertook a structured competitive bidding process, utilizing Priority Power Management’s advisory and consulting services, that delivered the best overall value to the City,” said Arlington CFO Mike Finley, adding, “This new contract achieves our goals of securing significant year-over-year savings and having budget certainty for a long period of time.”
“This contract was a great win for the City of Arlington,” said John Bick, managing principal of Priority Power Management. “We evaluated proposals from several qualified suppliers for various terms throughout the competitive bidding and negotiation process. Ultimately, we were able to negotiate and execute a contract that locks in all competitive retail electricity supply components at a very low price.”
The new contract with TXU Energy will begin in January 2018 and continue through December 2026.