It has been awhile since I looked at District 211’s official website update about its dealings with the Illinois Energy Consortium. Looking at it this morning, the first few paragraphs seem new (although I may just have early onset senile dementia).
Here are the first few sentences of the update as it now reads with my comments:
On May 11, 2006, the District 211 Board of Education approved the best offer received in the District’s request for proposals for electric and natural gas.
It has been reported over and over again and even, I think, stipulated in the court filings, that there were no written requests for proposals issued by the District. At best, I believe that a District 211 employee made some phone calls. So I think it is a significant exaggeration to refer to “the District’s request for proposals”.
Shame on them for writing that.
The Board reviewed its action on May 25, 2006, and determined that the Illinois Energy Consortium (IEC) was its best option.
Of course, as we have reviewed here, the Board made that determination after being given some documents from District 211 administrative personnel that showed higher prices from Constellation New Energy (CNE) than CNE had quoted to the District. The Board was not told that the prices it was looking at were not the prices that had been quoted by CNE, but were instead, a district employee’s speculations about what CNE should have said, not what it did say.
During the last several months of 2006, District 211 saved in excess of $133,000 compared to the Com Ed rates it had been paying.
As I’ve said on this blog umpteen times, the real question is how much did District 211 pay in those months versus what it would have paid if it had gone out and gotten competitive bids for electricity and natural gas, not versus what it might have paid to ComEd.
However, I got an email in the last few days that raises a different question. Here’s what that email says:
The district claims that savings for the period 8/06-12/06 was more than $133,000. Being in the energy industry, I submit to you that it would have been impossible to beat the ComEd default rate that was in place at that time. Real market prices were much higher and no power supplier could/would have sold power below ComEd rates that were still frozen through December 2006. If anyone has copies of IEC bills for that period I would be happy to do a comparison benchmarked to what the true rate would have been with ComEd.
The right thing to do would have been to advise all school districts to move back to ComEd for the period 6/06-12/06 since there was no savings versus the utility. My guess is the IEC couldn’t do that due to contractual obligations with their power supplier. By the way, has it ever been disclosed who the power supplier is for the IEC? Want to bet that the power supplier to the IEC hasn’t been put out to bid in years? I doubt the IEC would be willing to show proof of any bid occurring.
