Ameren announced a roughly 30 percent increase to their new Retail Purchased Electricity Charges which will become effective on June 1, 2015.  The new rates announced for residential customers will spike to about 5.68 cents per kilowatt hour.  The purchased electricity rate of 5.031 cents is added to a transmission cost of approximately 6 cents per kwh to make up the all-in rate residential customers see reflected on the supply portion of an Ameren bill.  The spike in rates is due to a recent auction where a 900 percent increase in a component of the price of electricity supply known as “capacity” occurred.  Many Southern Illinois communities have participated in municipal electric aggregation over the past several years.  Recently, some communities have elected to suspend their aggregation programs and return participating residents to Ameren’s default service with the expectation that Ameren’s new default rates would be lower than competitively procured rates.  Other communities took a wait-and-see position and will now be faced with aggregation bids that will likely result in rates higher than Ameren’s default rates.  In advance of these substantial rate increases Affordable Gas & Electric advised the municipalities it represents to take a long-term, proactive position to secure a guaranteed rate that is below Ameren’s newly announced rate, with the expectation that future Ameren rate announcements will see even greater increases.  56 communities opted for a rate of 5.527 cents per kwh for 30 months, and the City of Mount Vernon selected a rate of 5.40 cents per kwh guaranteed for 18 months.  Jeff Haarmann, Managing Partner of A.G.E. says residents who are already on their municipality’s aggregation rate do not need to do anything to continue on the program.  This includes Nashville, as Mayor Raymond Kolweier entered into a renewal in February with Homefield Energy for the contract for City Property before the current contract expires in May.  The renewal is for 30 months at 5.527 cents per kilowatt hour.  The Mayor has the right to agree to this contract per the agreement by the Council when it was first approved a couple of years ago.