JACKSON CENTER ELECTRIC DEPARTMENT

Municipal Electric Benefits as compared to Investor Owned

As a resident or business owner in Jackson Center, you realize that Jackson Center owns and operates a municipal electric system - one of more than 2,000 municipal systems in the United States - that services your home and / or business. Public power is a business model that has existed for more than 100 years and is similar to your community owning other public service enterprises such as water and sewer.

The benefits of public power include:

• Reliable electric service at competitive rates, decisions regarding the electric system, including rates, investments in renewables or other power supply options, are made by a local governing board at meetings open to the public.
• Support for community activities and economic development efforts.
• Local employees focused solely on our community in terms of system maintenance and restoration of service following an outage.
• Access to a mutual aid network to help in the aftermath of storms and other calamities that greatly reduces time to restore service in the wake of significant outages.
• Local control, the decisions regarding the rates and system management of Jackson Center are made by locally elected community officials (rather than in some far away board room), and local residents and businesses have an opportunity to make their views about your system heard locally.

You may have recently received promotional mailers and / or door-to-door solicitations from retail energy marketers promising low, fixed-rate electric supply, for specified time periods. These promotions have prompted questions from some residents and business owners. The purpose of this communication is to help you understand these offers.

As a municipal electric customer, the offer does not apply to you and the outside marketers should not have targeted your home or business. The Ohio Electric Choice program that permits marketers and power brokers to extend offers directly to retail customers applies to customers of investor-owned utilities and not to municipal electric systems or rural electric cooperatives. The reason for this is because of the local control and rate setting, which allow customers of these types of systems to enjoy competitive rates and benefit from long-term system planning to reduce exposure to markets that can be volatile.

In terms of offers from marketers, the information appears in many cases to be somewhat misleading. Customers are quoted a price per kilowatt-hour of electricity that does not include the cost of delivery of the power to their home. This leaves customers with the false impression that the offers are drastically cheaper than what they are currently paying.

Unlike investor-owned utilities, Jackson Center takes a long-term approach to power supply planning on behalf of the residents and businesses in Jackson Center. Because we don't have to worry about returning dividends to investors on a quarterly basis, we are able to provide long-term rate stability to our customers, and reduce or eliminate the need to look for short-term offers from other suppliers. Additionally, our customer-owners have a voice in the process, as decisions regarding rates and utility management are made in public meetings, by individuals elected by local residents.

On a residential utility bill under electric, the amount is the total for electricity which includes the energy cost, transmission cost, distribution cost, customer fee and KWh tax.  To view a copy of our Electric Rates and Charges Ordinance, click on this link:  Ordinance 2023-006.

Jackson Center Utilities is proud to be a part of the community, and strive to provide the best possible service for our residents and businesses. If you have questions, or would like to know more about operations at Jackson Center Electric contact the Village Office at (937) 596-6314.

Efficiency Smart

The Village of Jackson Center is pleased to partner with Efficiency Smart, which has online tools and resources to help you better understand and manage your home and business energy use and costs.

To learn more about Efficiency Smart, please click here: Efficiency Smart - Jackson Center