After going through two bid processes, city officials chose to buy its electricity from Bryan Texas Utility in Houston. However, Texas-New Mexico still distributes the electricity through its existing lines in the city and is responsible for responding to any reliability problems, such as blackouts. That has brought residents hefty savings since the price of fuel quadrupled last year. Many customers of other Texas electric companies, including Waco residents, have seen their bills double or triple recently because of increasing gas prices. City Manager Brandon Emmons said he thinks Gatesville got a favorable rate because it aggregated the city s 3,000 electricity customers when asking for a bid price.
Aggregation occurs when customers join together to form a single purchasing unit.
Companies often give lower rates to aggregated groups because it brings them a large number of customers. Aggregation also means a steadier electricity load for the company. A load is the amount of power it takes to meet customers needs at any given time. A mix of residential, commercial and industrial customers helps companies balance their load since the three types of users tend to have peak utility usage at different times of the day. It gave us a little more room to maneuver.