What is Hudson Valley Community Power?
Hudson Valley Community Power is a community choice aggregation (CCA) program for communities in New York’s Hudson Valley that provides participants access to renewable electricity at competitive rates.
The program empowers the community to pool local electricity demand in order to leverage the collective buying power of residents and small businesses in an effort to secure more favorable terms on their electricity supply and community solar contracts, protect consumers, and choose renewable generation sources.
The participating communities with active electricity supply contracts through the program are the City of Poughkeepsie; Towns of Gardiner, Marbletown, New Paltz, Philipstown, Red Hook, Rhinebeck, and Saugerties; and Villages of Cold Spring, Nelsonville, New Paltz, and Saugerties.
The prospective or previously active communities with no active electricity supply contracts through the program are the City of Beacon and the Town of Clinton.
This program was formed in partnership with Joule Community Power.
What is Community Power?
Community Power is a concept and “toolbox” that puts energy decision-making authority in the hands of communities rather than the state, transferring power to enable local autonomy. Community Power ensures that even the smallest communities are equipped with the legislative framework and tools to become active leaders in the transition away from fossil fuels in favor of clean energy. The tools currently offered by Joule Community Power are community choice electricity supply and community solar.
What is Joule Community Power?
Joule Community Power is developing a clean energy future by bringing the power of choice to municipalities across New York State, empowering local decision-making, enabling access to cleaner and cheaper energy, and making it easier for New Yorkers to transition to renewable energy. Through community choice aggregation (CCA), Joule helps municipalities join together to aggregate the buying power of residents at large enough scale to negotiate more favorable terms of their energy contracts, decrease electricity costs, designate renewable generation sources, choose clean energy, increase consumer protection, select a default energy services company, support local renewable generation, and deliver the benefits of solar, or other renewables, to entire communities. Joule launched the first and only community choice solar program in the country, bringing the benefits of solar to entire communities. Having created the blueprint to guide communities through a smooth and empowering process that moves energy consumers away from fossil fuels to clean energy, Joule aims to scale its Community Power model across NY State and beyond. s of December 2022, Joule provided access to clean energy and community solar to more than 800,000 NYers in 52 communities.
Joule Community Power is a division of Joule Assets, Inc.
Learn More about Community Choice Aggregation in NY
The Public Service Commission (PSC) authorized CCA April 21, 2016. The PSC continues to regulate CCA with the support of the Department of Public Service (DPS). Information including CCA program rules can be found here on the DPS website.
The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) created a toolkit to support the development of CCA. The toolkit can be found here on NYSERDA’s website.