BY ADAM ATKINSON
North Country This Week

CANTON — The village’s Sustainability Committee recently hosted a presentation for the public on community choice solar programs at their online Zoom meeting recently.

Jeff Domanski, community choice aggregation (community solar) specialist, of Hudson Valley Energy, talked about how such programs might fit with Canton’s overall sustainability goals at the April 6 meeting.

The village, like other local municipalities including the Town of Potsdam, is researching ways and companies to set up community choice aggregation to allow local residents to participate in what is essentially a buyers club for renewably generated electricity. Through the program, municipalities contract with companies which handle the administrative side of the buyer’s club on behalf of the town, managing bids and contracts for energy purchases and working with community solar suppliers and National Grid, and designing how the program will be set up.

In the town of Potsdam, the municipality has been having discussions with the company Joule Community Power to serve as an administrator. The town board was expected to discuss the issue again at their April 13 meeting, just after this writing.

“This is a program by which you can get a win, win, win scenario, three wins, for electricity supply, with the focus for us on renewables, promoting renewable supply on the New York State Grid,” Domanski said at the April 6 meeting. .

Domanski explained that since deregulation of energy companies in the 1990s, National Grid merely serves as transmission services to power generated elsewhere. Domanski said that since deregulation, individual customers can go into the supply marketplace and source their individual electricity supply, either for cost savings, or to obtain power from a renewable source through the distribution network.

He said that a recent survey indicates that 76 percent of people want renewable energy. And, in 2016 the state enabled the formation of CCA networks for electricity customers in the state as a means to purchase that renewable energy as a group at a cost savings.

“So CCA is something that builds on the individual customer ability to go into a supply marketplace to designate supply,” he said.

Domanski said that CCA programs also change where the default energy supply decision is made. Without CCA, individual electricity customers can choose from where the energy they consume is supplied, whether renewable or not. However, if they do not make the choice, then National Grid makes the default decision. With CCA, the local community under the program can make the default decision to pick renewable sources.

CCA programs need to be approved by the state Public Service Commission before they are implemented.

Canton’s municipalities are expected to discuss the idea further at upcoming meetings.

At the next village board meeting on April 21 there will be a public hearing at 6:20 p.m. on the first step of the CCA process, a resolution enabling the village to begin the process by gathering information both for the board and public on how CCA would operate and impact the community.