Brockton has finally decided to try buying its electricity in bulk. The city council voted to let Mayor Moises Rodriguez begin setting up a community aggregation system, a state-approved program that would purchase electric power for all Brockton homes and businesses in hopes of beating National Grid's basic service rate. It's a move nearly three decades in the making, and one that makes Brockton the last of Massachusetts' ten largest cities to embrace it.
The city held a public hearing on the plan, according to The Boston Globe, which first reported on the council's vote. Brockton officials did not respond to the Globe's request for comment, the paper noted. Once the system launches, Brockton residents will be automatically enrolled in the aggregation plan, though they will have 30 days to opt out if they prefer to stick with National Grid's basic service or shop elsewhere.
A Decades-Old Tool Brockton Skipped Until Now
Community aggregation isn't new. It originated in Massachusetts in 1997 under a state deregulation law that required electric utilities to spin off their power generators into independent companies, allowing generators to compete against each other rather than operate as single government-regulated monopolies for both delivery and supply, per the Globe's reporting. The Cape Light Compact was founded as the nation's first aggregator that same year, and the model spread widely: 35 U.S. states have since embraced power deregulation in some form, and Massachusetts now has 245 communities with community aggregation plans, covering about 70 percent of the state's municipalities, the newspaper reports.
That means Brockton, a city of about 106,000 people and the sixth-largest in Massachusetts, has been sitting on the sidelines of a tool most of its peers already use. The Globe notes that Brockton was the only large Massachusetts city that hadn't adopted a municipal power-buying scheme. Once the program is running, cities can demand a lower rate from suppliers, and power generators can bid to supply bundled municipal customers looking to undercut standard utility pricing.
Good Energy Will Run the Program, But Questions Remain
Good Energy, a New York-headquartered consultant, will run Brockton's aggregation program on behalf of the city. The firm already manages Brookline's aggregator service, where rates run as low as 13.4 cents per kilowatt-hour and typically save a household around $23 a month, locked in until December 2027, according to the Globe. Boston's aggregator rate, also run under a similar structure and locked in until December 2027, charges as little as 13.6 cents per kilowatt-hour. By comparison, Eversource charges 17.3 cents per kilowatt-hour for basic residential service in Brookline, and that utility resets its rates every six months.
Not every Brockton councilor is fully on board with how the plan came together. Ward 3 City Councilor Philip Griffin said he was not necessarily against the plan itself but disliked how it was structured, and he has requested more information about Good Energy and its profit plan. State guidelines from the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources address exactly that question: aggregation consultant fees are funded through a small administrative rate component, typically about $0.001 per kilowatt-hour, added directly to participating customers' supplier rates rather than drawn from municipal tax dollars — a fee that adds roughly $7.20 annually for an average household using 600 kWh a month.
Savings Aren't Guaranteed Every Six Months
Patrick Roche, Good Energy's director of innovation, offered a measured take on what aggregation can and can't promise. He said an aggregator is not guaranteed to provide cheaper electricity than a utility's basic rate, but that aggregator electricity often costs less, and that the savings, when they materialize, can be meaningful. Roche also pointed to long-term price stability as one of the model's best features, since Good Energy can lock in rates for extended periods rather than resetting every six months the way utility basic service does.
That stability argument matters because National Grid's own basic service rate has been volatile. As Hoodline reported on August rate hikes, National Grid raised its Massachusetts residential basic service rate to 16.669 cents per kilowatt-hour on August 1, up nearly 13 percent from 14.751 cents, with total supply charges reaching as high as 17.29 cents per kWh once administrative adjustments are included, according to data from ElectricityRates.com. Those resets happen every six months, on February 1 and August 1, which is part of why aggregation's fixed, longer-term contracts appeal to cities looking for predictability.
The Bigger Picture: Why Bulk Buying Is Catching On
Massachusetts residents have not always fared well shopping for power on their own. A March 2026 report from the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office found that individual residential consumers who signed up with third-party competitive electric suppliers lost $738.7 million net compared to basic service rates over the past decade, including $87.4 million in losses between July 2024 and June 2025, with low-income households disproportionately targeted by predatory retail contracts, according to Mass.gov. Municipal aggregation, which operates on an opt-out basis with built-in consumer protections, is widely viewed as a safer alternative for that reason.
The backdrop is a genuinely expensive electricity market. Massachusetts residential rates averaged 28.82 cents per kilowatt-hour in August 2026, about 56 percent above the national average of 18.44 cents, per U.S. Energy Information Administration data cited by Choose Energy, keeping the state among the five most expensive in the country for residential power. Electricity generally costs less in states where power generation remains regulated, the Globe notes, underscoring the tradeoffs built into the deregulated model Massachusetts adopted in 1997.
What Still Has to Happen Before Rates Lock In
A council vote is only the first step. Under Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 164 Section 134, launching aggregation requires a draft plan subject to a mandatory 30-day public comment period, review by the Department of Energy Resources, and formal approval from the Department of Public Utilities before Brockton can even solicit competitive supplier bids, according to guidance published on MassPowerChoice.com. The DPU streamlined that review process in July 2024 with uniform guidelines meant to clear a multi-year backlog of community energy petitions, so the timeline, while still likely to run several months, should move faster than it once would have.
Brockton's move also fits a regional pattern. Neighboring South Shore and Plymouth County communities including Abington, Rockland, Plymouth, Weymouth, and Whitman have already established or are actively pursuing their own aggregation programs, with Weymouth's securing supply rates at 14.249 cents per kilowatt-hour compared with utility default pricing. For low-income Brockton households in the meantime, National Grid's existing tiered discount program offers qualifying residential accounts monthly bill credits ranging from 32 to 71 percent based on income and household size, a safety net that predates and runs alongside whatever aggregation eventually delivers.
