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NJ's Only Co-op - What Sets Us Apart
By: Chris Reese, President & CEO
Email: contacttheceo@sussexrec.com
You may have seen the headlines recently: “Electric costs in NJ to increase again” – NJ.com. “Electric bill increases due for NJ customers” – NJBIZ. “Blame game as electric bills jump this summer” – NJ Spotlight News.
This all refers to the NJ Board of Public Utilities (BPU)’s recent announcement that the yearly auction for electricity prices will result in rate increases for the four investor-owned utilities (IOUs) in the state: PSE&G, JCP&L, Atlantic City Electric, and Orange & Rockland. Beginning June 1st, 2025, their residential customers will face rate increases of 17-20% on their monthly electric bills, about $25 per month.
Thankfully, Sussex REC and its members are exempt from the Electric Discount and Energy Competition Act (EDECA) of 1999, which set in motion the rules of deregulation in NJ and allowed customers to choose third party suppliers to cover the generation of their electricity. The IOUs were still required to provide Basic Generation Service (BGS) for those that wished not to “shop” for their generation.
Fast forward to 2025, and the competitive shopping market for generation never fully materialized. Most IOU customers still receive their power through BGS pricing, subject to open market prices in an annual auction overseen by the BPU. 2025’s auction resulted in much higher prices and the headlines you’ve seen.
While Sussex REC receives a portion of its power supply from the open market, most (about 67%) of our power comes from our own generation and transmission cooperative, Allegheny Electric Cooperative in Harrisburg, PA. Through Allegheny, we have 10% ownership of the Susquehanna nuclear plant in Berwick, PA, along with the Raystown hydro facility in Huntingdon, PA. These two sites provide us with steady, around-the-clock, carbon-free power. Allegheny’s contracts cover the remaining third of our supply needs through a mix of gas, coal, nuclear, hydro, and renewable sources. Market price fluctuations can affect the cost of these purchases, but that’s just a portion of our power supply. The rest of the state is affected by market prices much more heavily.
Market supply costs played a part in our rate increases in January of this year and last year, but they were also needed because of a dramatic and continued rise in our material and equipment costs. Like almost every other industry, we are facing higher costs across the board to run our company. For this reason, we cannot guarantee that market prices won’t affect our rates in the coming years. Right now, we are doing our best to manage costs and are keeping our members in mind. Our recent rate increases were not as high as the one that most of the state is facing now.
As a co-op, we are a cost-based company. We set our rates so we can meet our expenses and have some margin to invest in our people, supplies, equipment, and technology. We have no investors or stockholders to whom we are looking to return a profit or a dividend. Our only responsibility is to our 12,000 members!
As a co-op member, you should know that as of June 1st this year, your electric rates will be one of the lowest in the state of NJ. In fact, your rates will be lower than about 99% of the state’s households! At the same time, we are providing electricity to our members that is 80% carbon free. This is well above NJ’s generation mix that is at about 57-60% carbon free.
On top of that, we continue investing in technology to improve our reliability, implementing features like automated line switching that isolates power outages and, for some outages, restores members in less than two minutes instead of two hours (look out for an article on this in an upcoming issue).
Since 1937, our mission has been to provide the highest quality of service at the lowest possible cost. This sets us apart from New Jersey’s other utilities. While they wrangle with high power supply costs and other economic issues, the team at Sussex REC is focused on keeping the lights on and our rates as low as possible for our members.
