Strafford News

Dover City Council issued the following announcement on July 22.

At the City Council’s July 14 meeting, the Council authorized the City Manager to sign the Joint Powers Agreement of the Community Power Coalition of New Hampshire, thereby joining the Community Power Coalition as one of its founding members. Community Power is a non-profit corporation created as a result of state law RSA 53-E.

City Manager J. Michael Joyal, Jr. told the Council the coalition allows participating communities to work together to secure electrical power supply contracts. Joyal said that each community could decide on the power supply provider and the makeup of the energy provided by the supplier. According to the resolution background materials, local governments can procure and provide electricity to its residents and business on a competitive basis with traditional energy suppliers. By working together with other communities, the City could lower costs and leverage renewable energy projects as a source of power. Joyal said there are likely to be procurement costs associated with obtaining power supply contracts in the future; however, there is no commitment for the City of Dover to share those costs at this time. Currently, any costs are covered by a grant by one of the other founding communities.

Joyal said he believes that any future procurement costs would be taken off the rate charged for the electricity supply.

Original source can be found here.