Okay.

All right.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

My name is Matt McCoy.

I'm one of your town counselors.

I'd like to acknowledge my fellow town counselor, Beth Hill Ross, who's here this evening.

We have members of the planning department from the town here as well.

And then I'd like to introduce Courtney Van Hoffel and Rachel Ferdinand from Good Energy, who will be here to field your questions and give you a briefing on information about the program.

Just before we begin, I want to make note that we had a prior session.

That prior session was recorded and is available on the town website.

So if you want to view that, you can do that.

If you have follow on questions, there will be a session tomorrow at 10 a.m.

at the senior center.

So you can come back if you think of something this evening when you go home.

Welcome, ladies.

Anywhere you'd like to sit.

So basically, I just want to start by saying we're here for a good energy community electricity information briefing.

Ocean State Community Electricity is a program endorsed by the town of North Kingstown and administered by consultant Good Energy and the chosen energy supplier next era.

This program provides residents and businesses with new options for electricity supply.

Right?

So the distribution of your electricity is and will always be right now, Rhode Island Energy.

That is because this is an opt-out program which complies which compiles the bulk purchasing power of multiple residents to negotiate better rates.

This will be further achieved by joining the existing buying group consisting of seven other Rhode Island municipalities.

Good energy team will expand on the intricacies of the program as they are experts in their field.

The staff of the town have been working closely with Good Energy Team, and the program is launching in January of 2026.

So that's all of you.

So if you have questions, tonight is the time to ask those questions.

And then make sure that when you leave this evening, after you've reviewed the various other sessions, that you have all your questions and concerns addressed, and you can make the best decision on how you would like to proceed as a consumer.

So without further ado, I turn you over to Courtney and Rachel.

Thank you.

Hi everyone.

I'm Courtney from Good Energy, and as stated, oh, are you using the microphone?

Yes.

Could you get close?

Yes.

That's better.

Okay.

Deal.

Hi everyone, I'm Courtney from Good Energy.

I'm here tonight with my colleague Rachel.

And we are excited to present to you tonight the Ocean State Community Electricity Program.

We're going to run through how this program works, the supply options through the program.

And we're going to run through participation, which is completely voluntary.

We do ask that you hold all your questions until the end of the presentation.

So without further ado, we thought we would start with the purpose of this program.

Ocean State Community Electricity is a municipal aggregation program.

Truly the purpose of this program is to give you as an electricity consumer more options.

While we can't guarantee savings in every rate period, our programs, both in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, have historically all saved money over the course of their entire contract.

So the way this municipal aggregation program works is through collective buying power.

And I want to review how this all works because the topic of the nature of the opt-out program was discussed a lot during our last public meeting.

Once a town authorizes aggregation for their community, there is a bid with thoroughly vetted suppliers and negotiations occur for the best prices and terms with the buying power of the whole town.

This is why the program is designed as an opt-out program.

In our experience running these programs nationally for 15 years, opt-in programs do not achieve meaningful participation.

High participation is necessary for these programs to function because that's how we attract suppliers.

Without supplier interest, the program cannot function, and because of this, opt-in models are considered non-starters.

I want to talk about the last public meeting because there was a question about why the program is opt-out instead of opt-in.

And really want to clarify that this particular program is designed solely as an opt-out program.

It is not structured to operate as an opt-in program because opt-in does not work effectively.

In terms of Rhode Island law, while the Rhode Island statute does allow opt-in programs and nearly every state allows for opt-in, they do not reach the critical mass of participation, as I mentioned before, that is required for suppliers to offer competitive pricing.

The Rhode Island legislator recognized these barriers and they revised the statute in 2017 to make opt-out programs available and realistically allow for aggregation programs in the state of Rhode Island.