UPDATE: Northbrook Voters Pass Electricity Referendum 3-1

UPDATED, 9:50 PM:

It looks like Northbrook voters will be pulling the plug on ComEd. 

A referendum to seek bids from an alternate electricity supplier passed by a 3-1 margin, according to unofficial results from the Cook County Clerk’s website. With 31 of 31 precincts reporting at 9:50 p.m., it appears that voters support the measure. Some 4,970 people, or 75 percent of voters, checked yes on the ballot, while 1,618, or 25 percent, checked no.

Along with Deerfield, Glencoe, Highland Park, Lake Bluff, Lake Forest, Park Ridge and Skokie, the village of Northbrook . Voters in each community were asked if they want the consortium to act on their behalf by bundling electric accounts and seeking bids for electricity on the open market rather than continuing to buy power from Commonwealth Edison.

Passed into law in 2009,  allows villages to pool residential and small business accounts, combine forces with other municipalities and seek bids from alternate electric providers to ComEd in order to negotiate a better rate.  

Since the law was passed, at least 19 Illinois communities have entered into agreements with alternative electric suppliers, which require a community vote by referendum. Several hundred more had a referendum on electrical aggregation on their ballots Tuesday. 

As the next step in the process, Northbrook and other consortium municipalities will seek bids from one of 24 alternate electric suppliers approved by the State of Illinois.

In each community that the program is passed, residents will still be able to opt out and remain with ComEd by contacting the utility during a specific time period. Under any scenario, ComEd will remain the distributor of electricity. That means that customers with outages will still call ComEd to report the loss of power, and bills will still come from the same place. As local officials have pointed out, the program would have no affect on —simply on the portion of the electrical bill that accounts for supply costs. 

Under the agreement, any member of the consortium can reject the bids at any time if they do not want to move forward with the process. 

The consortium is moving toward early selection of a supplier, in hopes of getting to the market ahead of the more than 300 other communities pursuing electrical aggregation on the March 20 ballot, .

Currently, any resident or business owner can drop ComEd as a supplier and purchase electricity on an individual basis from one of 23 alternative companies approved by the Illinois Commerce Commission.

Assuming the referendum passes, Northbrook will hold a public hearing at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 3, on the parameters of the program before seeking bids from suppliers.