Ameren Illinois customers can expect a drop in their bills. How much?

Ameren Illinois customers will see a $1.50 drop in their monthly bills, starting in June.

The electricity capacity costs have decreased for residents in the southern two-thirds of the state, after a recent auction held by the Midcontinent Independent System Operator.

MISO operates a wholesale electric capacity market in all or parts of 15 states for energy suppliers and utilities.

“The 2017-18 auction results reflect a net regional increase in supply compared to last year’s results,” said Richard Doying, MISO’s executive vice president of operations, in a news release. “Even as the generation fleet continues to evolve, the level of available resources positions the region well for reliable operations in the coming year.”

All local resource zones in the MISO footprint cleared at $1.50 per megawatt day, reflecting an adequate availability of resources for the upcoming planning year, which begins in June, and the grid’s capability to effectively transfer resources among zones, MISO said in a news release.

The single price across the MISO area differs from last year’s results, when retirements and capacity exports contributed to higher clearing prices in several zones, the auction operator said in a news release.

For the southern part of Illinois, two years ago, the capacity price reached $150 per megawatt day after the 2015-16 planning resource auction, while other MISO regions cleared between $3.29 and $3.48 per megawatt day.

Prices cleared at $72 for Illinois — and parts of Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Indiana and Kentucky, and all of Iowa — after the 2016-17 resource auction. Other areas had prices of either $2.99 or $19.72.

For Ameren Illinois customers, the lower capacity price after the 2017-18 auction means a projected decrease in monthly bills, Ameren Illinois Spokeswoman Marcelyn Love said in an email to the BND.

Customers who get their electric supply from Ameren Illinois will save approximately $1.50 per month for residential customers on the supply portion of their bill starting June 1, Love said. Electricity supply makes up one-half to two-thirds of the total electric bill. The rest of the bill is the delivery charge.

Shawn McFarlane, the executive director for Forward Operations for MISO, said it is hard to determine how the capacity auction results would affect the customers’ monthly bills.

He said service providers, such as Ameren Illinois, have other avenues of obtaining electricity to meet their needs for the year such as directly contracting power producers.

McFarlane said there also was a decrease in demand for electricity while supply increased, especially in the Midwest region.

McFarlane added the auction results only reflect what will happen for 12 months.

“These results reflect a single year commitment of resources; (it is) not long term,” McFarlane said.

This also is the first capacity auction that occurred after the Illinois enacted the Future Energy Jobs Bills, which among other things subsidized two Exelon-operated nuclear power plants.

“I can’t speculate how that might have impacted clearing prices,” McFarlane said.

This story was originally published April 22, 2017 at 8:01 AM with the headline "Ameren Illinois customers can expect a drop in their bills. How much?."