ROCHELLE — On March 20, City of Rochelle City Manager Jeff Fiegenschuh and Rochelle Municipal Utilities Superintendent of Electric Operations Blake Toliver made their thoughts known against potential state legislation that could impact electric public utilities like RMU. 

Fiegenschuh said there is currently potential legislation in the works that includes possible impacts such as changes to how RMU bills customers with solar and wind power, the taking of authority over public utilities away from local government and giving it to the Illinois Commerce Commission, and requiring public utilities like RMU to increase the amount of renewable energy in their portfolios.

RMU currently works with its customers that have wind and solar power through a net metering policy. RMU customers that push solar or wind energy back out onto its grid receive a credit on their bills. The potential state legislation would hold RMU to the same requirements as a large private utility like ComEd. 

RMU currently pays customers a lower avoided-cost rate and ComEd pays net metering customers a higher retail rate. 

“If this new legislation comes out, we would have to credit our customers at the full retail rate,” Toliver said. “That means that the other customers on our system will have to subsidize the customers that have solar. And that's not fair to them either. We only have 7,500 customers in our territory, and ComEd has three million. It's a lot easier for ComEd to spread those costs out among that many customers than it is for us. If we're paying them the full retail rate, we still have to maintain our lines, pay our linemen and do all of the things that keep the utility operating day in and day out. Those customers aren't relying on their solar power 24/7. It's only when it's producing. We still have to be there as their backup source of energy when it isn't.”

Fiegenschuh stressed that public utilities like RMU are not profit-driven like private utilities such as ComEd. RMU reinvests excess revenue back into its system. RMU’s policy decisions are currently set by the mayor and city council. The city manager wants to see it remain that way.

“Moving us in the direction of putting RMU under the Illinois Commerce Commission would take all of the authority away from us to do our own local ratemaking and take all the power and authority of the utility away from the mayor and council and put it in a bureaucrat's hands in Chicago at the ICC,” Fiegenschuh said. “And we don't want that. We want to have a say over our utility.”

For a potential renewables portfolio percentage requirement, that possible legislation would cause RMU to have to hit 40 percent by 2026 and increase that number each year. RMU’s current renewable percentage is near 10 percent and it is already locked in to purchase contracts of nonrenewable power well past 2026. 

“That's impossible for us,” Fiegenschuh said. “We’d be forced to go out and buy renewables we don't need just to meet their mandates. If we have to go out and take on other contracts just to meet a renewable standard, all that does is pass costs onto our customers. All of this potential legislation is eventually going to cost our customers more money. We want to do better with renewables, but we don't need the state telling us we need to do better. I think that's really up to our residents and our mayor and the city council.”

RMU’s renewable energy sources on its system currently include a solar field at the RMU wastewater treatment plant that’s planned to double in size in the coming years, along with a methane gas plant at the Rochelle Landfill. The city has also considered a community solar project in the future that residents could buy into. 

“As a whole, we purchase more renewables in our own territory than investor-owned utilities because our load is smaller,” Toliver said. “With the percentage of renewables that we have online that we're net billing for already, we're well over the percentage of renewables that these investor-owned utilities are purchasing currently. It's not that we're against renewables at all, because we're purchasing more renewables than they are. It's just that we have to be smart about it and make sure it fits into our portfolio to make sure that our rates stay stable for our ratepayers.”

Toliver said that the biggest potential impact of all facets of the possible legislation would be needed rate increases to RMU customers to compensate for extra purchases of energy, which he would like to avoid. 

The city pays a lobbying firm to work on its behalf at the state level on issues such as potential legislation that could change how RMU operates. In the past, its lobbying firm has gotten city officials in front of lawmakers to testify on RMU’s behalf. 

“We're trying to educate them on what a locally-owned electric utility is and why it's so important to maintain local control,” Fiegenschuh said. “We'll continue to advocate on behalf of RMU and other electric utilities like us. We believe adamantly in local control. If you're upset about your rate, a power outage or that your utilities were shut off, you have local people here who you can call. If you're upset that your rate might go up, you can come to a city council meeting and express that frustration. You have direct control over the utility through elected officials. With the ICC, those people aren't from Rochelle. People who live here should be the ones making the decisions for the utility.”