Village of Marathon Notice

Due to the extremely cold weather in late January 2026, wholesale electricity prices in New York spiked to record-high levels.  While the Village of Marathon municipal utility does not control energy market prices, these higher costs are passed through to the customer bills and may be reflected over the next month or two.  Despite this increase, purchasing power from the New York Power Authority helped limit the impact, keeping municipal electric rates significantly lower than those of major utilities across the state.  The PPAC (see example below) rates will go down in future months as the weather improves.

PURCHASED POWER ADJUSTMENT (PPAC)

 We are often asked what this charge is on your electric bill. The Village is billed each month for the kwh sold, demand, and wheeling and transmission charges (the cost of delivering power to the Village). The Village receives its power from hydroelectric power from the New York Power Authority’s Niagara Project, which is one of the lowest cost sources of power in the country. We have a maximum demand of 4,445 KW that we can receive from this source. If we exceed this demand, we must purchase the balance (the second source, which we call incremental power) from other market sources. This source of power is three times more expensive than the hydropower. The Village usually exceeds the hydro demand during the months of November thru April.

Your base rate basically covers a portion of the cost of hydropower and all other costs that are needed to run the Dept., which is what we consider the base cost of power. The New York Power Authority sets this rate for the Village of Marathon.  Once we exceed this base cost, the remainder is billed through the PPAC. This obviously is much greater during the months of November thru April, since we have to purchase power through the more expensive source.

Example:

Total cost for purchased power for the month                                                         $100,000.00

Total KWH purchased for the month                                                                           2,500,000   

Price per KWH for the month                                                                                        $0 .04

Base Price per KWh  (set by NYPA)                                                                                      $0.028803

Difference between actual price and Base Price = PPAC                                           $0.011197 (per KWH)

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