Everyone knows the best deals can be had when buying in volume. Anyone who’s ever been to a warehouse club store understands that power. Thanks to recent agreements with Direct Energy, thousands of nonprofit facilities throughout Massachusetts and trade associations in Maryland are now enjoying that leverage in their electricity prices, along with a level of contract flexibility they might not have otherwise had.

The agreements benefit the PowerOptions subsidiary of the Massachusetts Health and Educational Facilities Authority (HEFA), which represents more than 500 nonprofit institutions, cities and towns, and other public organizations, and the Mid-Atlantic Aggregation Group Independent Consortium (MAAGIC), an aggregation of nine industry trade associations—such as the Building Owners and Managers Association of Baltimore, the Health Facilities Association of Maryland and the Maryland Hotel and Lodging Association—comprising more than 6,100 members. Under the terms of the agreements, PowerOptions’ HEFA members receive their choice of contract length and a variety of pricing options, and the MAAGIC program provides the organization’s customers with price protection through multi-year, fixed-price offerings, with no bandwidth provisions and no demand charges.

For PowerOptions, “Direct Energy enables our organization to continue to provide our members with strategies for managing their energy costs,” observes Carter Wall, the organization’s Executive Vice President. “The strength of the company, the terms of its offering and its excellent customer service made it the natural choice to build upon the strategies we’ve implemented over the past 10 years for our member organizations.”

As for the advantages of the program, PowerOptions member Joseph Collins, Director of Energy Resources at UMass Medical School, notes that it “has brought significant savings to Massachusetts’s nonprofit and public institutions, which in turn helps all of the people we serve.”

“Direct Energy was the clear choice as our preferred electric supplier for MAAGIC and its association members,” adds Paula Kreuzburg, President of MAAGIC. “Initial participation in the program has been outstanding, with more than 900 accounts electing to enroll and receive the benefits of the program. It is already the most successful electric aggregation program we have experienced, and we expect that to continue through future open enrollment periods.”
MAAGIC organizations with the highest participation include the Restaurant Association of Maryland, Printing and Graphics Association Mid-Atlantic, Maryland Retailers Association, Health Facilities Association of Maryland and the Washington, Maryland, Delaware Service Station and Automotive Repair Association.
 “The power of ‘choice’ in electricity continues to gain momentum in Massachusetts and Maryland,” asserts Bob Porter, Vice President of Direct Energy. “It’s organizations such as HEFA’s PowerOptions and MAAGIC that illustrate why choice should be a right of every customer, rather than a privilege. In the face of energy challenges, choice lets them take control and make the decisions about what’s good for their business or institution.”