Ingrid Mezo

Thurmont town superintendent Jim Griever is looking into the town building its own power generator to give the town more control over electric rates for its residents.

Town residents in 2007 will continue to see their electric bills go up, and recent power cost adjustments have caused the rate to go up more than originally anticipated—a total of 46 percent from April 2006 to January 2007— amounting to an average bill that costs $14.03 more than last year, a spokesperson for Downes Associates, Inc., said during a recent presentation to the town. Downes Associates is the company the town hired to oversee its electric contract with Allegheny Electric Supply (AES).

Thurmont is seeing these rate increases earlier than other municipalities throughout Frederick County and the state, due to rate caps in effect until 2009 elsewhere that were placed there in an effort to moderate the soaring power costs caused by deregulation of power companies throughout the state. But, once those rate caps come off, residents throughout the state will be hit hard, Mayor Martin Burns has repeatedly said.

The Town of Thurmont, along with Hagerstown, Front Royal, and Williamsport entered into a power contract with AES for the next five years in an effort to stabilize rising electric prices during periods of volatility in the market.

Payment plans are available for residents who are struggling, and the town is providing materials to educate residents on how they can get tax credits from the federal government and what they can do in their homes to save energy.

Griever, who has been in the electric business for 30 years, said de-regulation of power companies in other states throughout the country has had the same effect universally of increasing electric rates to residents. Attempts at re-regulation, he said, have not helped either.

"It costs too much to get into the business," he said during an interview. "Telemarketers were trying to get into it and make money without risk, and it didn’t work."

Efforts to cut costs to electric companies, so that shareholders could still get their profits despite the rate caps have created a dangerous situation through out the state, Griever added. "There are trees way above the 200 KV line on the beltway to Baltimore, and the lines have burned holes through the trees," he said. "[If trees were to fall on that line] it would make lights go out all over Maryland, and West Virginia, and D.C. It would be a mess."

Griever pointed to a 2001 heat wave in Chicago in which 2,000 people died because the power went off. In Spain and France, power outages caused the deaths of 6,000.

The problem with electricity, Griever said, is "There is too much demand, and not enough electricity, so they’re charging people when the prices go up."

Griever, who spearheaded building a power plant in Geneva, IL, where he was formerly employed, is starting to work on a similar project in Thurmont. That will involve determining what kind of generator would make the most sense to build, conducting a cost benefit analysis to see if it is worth building, and then town board members taking a final vote on it.

"What it will amount to is revealing the town’s options because the contract [with AES] expires in four-and-a-half years," Griever said.

The biggest similarity between Thurmont and Geneva, IL, is that there is a lack of transmission capacity in the region, Griever added. This is a problem in any areas around large metropolitan areas in the United States. "And, even though Thurmont has that transmission line going through the middle of it, the cost to get the electricity to Thurmont is a very significant amount of the electric bills

that residents pay every month," he said.

Griever said he would look into all five different methods to generate electricity, including wind, solar, natural gas, fuel oil, and diesel.

"Not all of them would make sense, but we’ll look at them anyway," he said. "Fuel cell technology has come a long way in the last few years…We’ll investigate it, and then once the type of generation is chosen, then a cost benefit analysis looking over the next 20 or 30 years. You determine your payback with any project of this size; you determine if you move forward with it at that point. Number one is feasibility, then cost benefit analysis, then you decide at that point."

Burns, and Commissioners Wayne Hooper and Ron Terpko have all expressed an interest in the project.

"This is something we would have to go to Downes Associates for them to assist us with looking into all this," Burns said. "We’ll see if it’s worth it, if oil keeps going up…if it’s anticipated a cost savings is realized. I’m always willing to look into anything."