Mark Frye, who serves concurrently as the mayor of Sylvania and the president of Palmer Energy, spoke at the Oregon city council meeting on Oct. 27.

Frye’s discussion centered on the impact of data centers, namely the future outlook of electric rates. He made a presentation and then answered questions from both council and the residents in attendance.

Council member Kathy Pollauf was instrumental in bringing Frye in to speak after hearing him speak in Lucas County around a month ago.

Palmer Energy, per its official website, is described as a leader in unbiased energy management and consulting. They have been working with the city of Oregon, as well as all of Lucas County and northern Wood County in regard to government community aggregation services for electric and natural gas supplies for participants in the aggregation programs.

“We've been doing this on your behalf for about 25 years,” Frye said. “And over the last 25 years, since third-party electricity supply was available, we've been able to save consumers who are participating in the program about 194 million compared to what they would have paid to Toledo Edison. A little over $70 million of that was related to the fact that we fixed the price a little over three years ago for the price of electricity, which at the time was a competitive rate.

“But fundamentally, with what was going on in the marketplace at the time, I recommended to the communities to sit down and look at a longer-term fixed price. And the communities agreed. You all agreed. And we were able to save about $70 million just in the past three years.

“The unfortunate reality is contracts end, particularly beneficial contracts. And that price at 6.3 cents per kilowatt hour ended in May of this year. So basically, in May bills you got 6.3 cents. June bills, if you were participating in the aggregation, it went up to 9.7. There's lots of different reasons for the jump, which I'll start to go into and expand on in a minute.

“Fundamentally, we fixed at an opportune time. The wholesale market for electricity and for what's called generation capacity both rose substantially over that same time frame. So, we had a long-term fixed price, and unfortunately, we reverted back to the marketplace conditions that naturally occur at the end of the contract. Had the prices been lower, obviously the prices would have been lower for participants. So, the benefit of this is substantial savings. The problem or the challenge with this is that it created a shock to everybody.

“To give you a sense for an average residential customer, that was a significant sum of, it's probably $20 to $25 a month in their electric bills if they're participating in the aggregation. Now I've had lots of people ask me this question … what happened? What's going on? Is this about data centers?

“Well, yes and no. It's a little more complex than that. To give you a feel of this, over 18 years, from 2005 until 2023, the amount of consumption of electricity in the United States went up three percent. Think of everything that's changed since 2005 until 2023. Smartphones and all of the Amazon centers and all of those things that were constructed and built, all of the homes that were constructed here in the city of Oregon — all of those things basically were balanced out against the conservation of electricity that you've done here in your facilities, you've done in your water and your water rec facilities, and that we've all done in our homes and businesses. They balanced each other out.”