NILES — Residents and council members were given insight into the city’s portfolio and ongoing trends in the energy industry through an annual presentation from one of its partners.

Ahead of Wednesday’s regular council meeting, Mayor Steven Mientkiewicz introduced Paul Beckhusen, senior vice president of power supply for American Municipal Power.

While Beckhusen touched on topics such as the city’s peak loads and energy usage and the three ways electricity was delivered — energy, transmission and installed capacity — he noted changes to the city’s portfolio, which shows its resources for 2027.

“The city’s added another resource. It’s the blue pie at the top there — Tallgrass. That’s a waste-to-heat project,” Beckhusen said. “We’re also working, got some recommendations out for some additional solar (groups) to provide some more diversification to the portfolio.”

Beckhusen said his group is working to transfer nine of Fremont Energy Center’s 29 megawatts to Westerville next year, reducing the city’s portfolio share from 63% to 43% and creating diversification.

“Bright Mountain Solar is the solar project we’re currently working on that would add some solar to the portfolio,” Beckhusen said. “We tend to try and keep some of the energy on the market, so that provides flexibility with load variations and things like that you are exposed to on the market.”

The solar project, recommended as 6 megawatts starting in 2028 and would replace a wind farm ending in 2029, would also need an ordinance to be passed, according to Beckhusen’s presentation.

TRANSMISSION RATES

With Niles being in FirstEnergy’s transmission zone, Beckhusen said a rate is associated with the charges, related to the one-time highest peak on an annual basis, which typically occurs during summer.

A graph of demand charges showed an upward trend since 2023, rising from $6.18 to $8.20 in 2026. That charge is projected to be $12.81, according to the graph.

“There’s a lot of upward pressure on transmission rates; All load serving entities have this charge, so whether you’re an investor-owned utility, a co-op, or in the case of municipals, everybody sees the same rate,” Beckhusen said. “So there’s some peak shaving resources here in the city that they participate in. We dispatch those units to lower the peak during those events, so it translates to less transmission-related charges that you would see there.”

By participating in those peak-shaving resources, the city has saved at least $11 on residents’ rates — an estimated $25 without credits, but $14 in net transmission charges.

INSTALLED CAPACITY CHARGES

Another bar graph showed historical changes to the Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland Reliability Pricing Model Capacity Charges, a forward-looking capacity market designed to ensure long-term grid reliability by procuring power supply resources three years in advance.

Beckhusen said they wouldn’t know what the actual costs for the next three years would be until an auction for them clears in June.

Beckhusen said multiple variables caused prices to jump from $0.90 in 2024 / 2025 to $8.23, $10.01 and $10.14 the following planning years.

“So over the last number of years, there’s been a lot of resources retired in PJM, particularly around coal resources — coal plants have been shut down, so we’ve got less supply,” Beckhusen said. “We’ve got less supply, and now we’re starting to see an uptick in load growth around data centers, around just industries.

“We’re starting to onshore more industries, more economic development, so we’re just in an inflection point where the demand is starting to outstrip the supply,” he added.

Beckhusen said resources are also being affected by “reserve margins,” margins added to resources identified as needed for reliability.

“Those margins have also increased because, back to my earlier comment about particularly coal and other base load resources being retired, we’re seeing more wind and solar,” Beckhusen said. “That means you need to have more resources available when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun’s not shining — that’s caused another significant increase related to the overall capacity requirements.”

Those capacity charges uncover another benefit to the city participating in AMP’s projects, Beckusen said, as residents would have had to pay an estimated $20 charge in 2025-26, but instead had a $5 credit, a graph showed.

“With all the resources that are located behind the meter here, you actually, during those peak times when we have those assets running, it offsets the entire load,” Beckhusen said.