ROCHELLE — In October, the U.S. Department of Energy-Energy Information Administration reported that the average retail price of residential electricity sold in Illinois in the month of August 2024 was 15.77¢ per kWh. Rochelle City Manager Jeff Fiegenschuh and Rochelle Municipal Utilities Superintendent Blake Toliver told the News-Leader Nov. 20 that RMU’s rate is consistently below the statewide average, and the city and RMU are working to keep it that way.

Fiegenschuh said the main reason RMU is able to stay below the statewide average is because it’s locked in long-term power prices that stay “pretty constant” with the Prairie State Energy Campus through 2042 and NextEra Energy through 2029. RMU is also able to generate power behind the meter at its generation plant to shave off power needs during extremely hot or cold days when electric use is high in RMU’s service territory. 

The city has over $100 million in debt remaining until 2042 with the Prairie State Energy Campus in southern Marissa, Illinois. The city buys a large portion of its RMU power from Prairie State and bought into the coal plant in 2007.

“Whether you agree with Prairie State or not, it's baseload generation and as long as the plant is running, we're guaranteed power,” Fiegenschuh said. “Our prices have actually gone down since Prairie State opened. It's about six cents including the debt service. Those are pretty consistent prices. With NextEra Energy, we got prices that you just can't touch today. The average blended price was 2.8 cents. Having power contracts in place with lower prices ensures that our rates remain stable. Our local generation during peak power needs times also helps to keep our rates stable. That reduces our capacity and transmission costs, which are passed along to the customer.”

In 2021, the Climate and Equitable Jobs (CEJA) Act was signed into law at the state level and required Prairie State to be carbon-free by 2045, either by going offline or installing sequestration technology. By 2035, the plant must cut emissions by 45 percent. If it doesn’t meet that goal by the end of 2035, the power plant will have until June 30, 2038 to either retire a portion of carbon-emitting units or meet the decarbonization goal some other way. Back in 2021, the city held a press conference to urge the public to reach out to state legislators as it seemed the energy bill could close the plant earlier than expected in 2035. Last year, Fiegenschuh called the future of Prairie State “the number one issue” facing the City of Rochelle due to how it would replace that power and potential outstanding bond payments after its early closure.

Earlier this month, Illinois House Minority Leader Tony McCombie (R-Savanna) filed a bill package to extend deadlines put in place by the CEJA Act. House Bill 5899, part of the package, would extend deadlines by five years for reduced or zero carbon dioxide equivalent for electric generating units and large greenhouse gas-emitting units that use coal as a fuel. McCombie’s legislation awaits further consideration in the Illinois House of Representatives.

Fiegenschuh said extending the life of Prairie State is “a good thing” for Rochelle and power prices. The city will continue to advocate for an extension to happen. He said coal and natural gas plants being taken offline has resulted in shortages of power on the market and increased prices. 

Toliver said he believes more talk will be seen about pushing the closing back of plants like Prairie State. He and Fiegenschuh expressed desire for increased solar and wind energy in RMU’s portfolio in the future, but they don’t believe the technology is in place for the state’s current timeline. 

“We can't just shut down all of these baseload power plants and expect that the solar and wind are going to be able to be enough,” Toliver said. “You still need power when it's dark out and the wind isn't blowing. I think you'll see a lot more of the small modular nuclear reactors and some new innovative ways to produce that baseload energy. I think our legislators have made it very clear what they want to happen and set very strict deadlines to get people to move in that direction. I do think we are going to have to move the deadlines back a little bit just because the technology isn't there yet. But the technology is evolving every day. We are moving in the right direction.”

Toliver said having an extension on Prairie State’s closure would “help immensely” as RMU evaluates its power needs in the future. The plant would require new technology to become able to meet state deadlines to remain open. 

The city’s work with renewable energy sources in the future could include putting solar panels on top of its own buildings and working with power customers that add solar arrays to their businesses. RMU is approached “fairly regularly” by local industries about their desire to add solar, Toliver said. 

RMU has a net metering policy in place for customers with solar arrays that push power back onto its grid where they’re compensated for the power. Toliver said the local utility has to be cautious with that aspect so RMU isn’t taking on more solar power than it’s using and selling it back on the power market for a loss. 

Planning work is currently underway on RMU’s new electrical substation project on the west side of town on Illinois Route 38, which will cost north of $20 million. The work will allow more industrial growth and the ability to back feed power during outages. In May 2022, the city completed another $13.8 million electrical substation project at 1630 Ritchie Court. Toliver said those expensive projects will not impact customers’ rates.

“Between cash reserves and the bonding we did at low interest rates and some of the other investments we've done, that's how we'll pay for the infrastructure projects and keep rates stable for our customers,” Toliver said. “We're not out to make money on our customers by pushing those costs onto them. We routinely do rate studies and build infrastructure costs into the rate studies. Even with all these large capital expenditures, some of our rates have still been able to go down, which is great for our customers.” 

Fiegenschuh touted RMU’s electric rate being lower than neighboring service provider and large investor-owned utility ComEd, along with RMU’s shorter outage times and local service representatives. He reminded customers that live in town that their RMU bill also includes water, wastewater and garbage on top of power. 

“It means everything that we're a small local utility and we're able to provide our services at a lower cost than larger providers,” Fiegenchuh said. “The average person, the rates are probably what's most important to them. I think it's great we're able to provide all of these services at a cost that's lower than 10 miles outside of Rochelle.”