Why people don't change their electrical supplier!

Comment

Comment by Tom Delconte on March 14, 2012 at 5:12am

David: yes, of course. Now, finally, two big factors are getting electricity customers to shop around for power. After years of steady price increases, electricity prices have been bouncing around and generally falling, and technology once only available to big industrial customers is trickling down to smaller users. That's what I meant. Everything varies state to state an country to country, as usual.

Comment by David Fay on March 13, 2012 at 4:52pm

Tom: Could you expand on that a bit? I'm not really following what you're saying. I was talking about consumers. In MA, the "retail power sellers" are most certainly "delivering on the promised of deregulation" at least in my experience.

Comment by Tom Delconte on March 13, 2012 at 3:25pm

David: for companies, volatile electricity prices and new technologies are finally allowing retail power sellers to deliver on the promise of deregulation, for consumers in many states, not so much!

Comment by David Fay on March 11, 2012 at 3:49pm

"You might almost call deregulation of the market an utter failure because the sign-up rate is so abysmal."

Actually, it might be a sign of success. In MA, deregulation has forced the electric utilities to offer highly competitive rates for electricity supply. If utility rates are almost as good as competitive suppliers, what's the motivation to switch? (Just for the record, I switched to a competitive supplier years ago and it was a good deal at first, but now it barely beats the utility price.)

Comment by Tom Delconte on March 5, 2012 at 7:37am

Thanks, again, Bob, for your polite and helpful comments! Back east, as you can imagine, it's a utilty company-eat-customer world. Wish I lived in Oklahoma! It sounds like your utilities are progressive. The one in Philadelphia, PECO/Exelon, has gotten rid of heat pump rates, and off-peak rates, but has a new summer credit if you install the Comverge gray-out module for summer peak load days.

Comment by Bob Blanchette on March 4, 2012 at 3:59pm

In Oklahoma we don't have deregulated power. We do however have several pricing plans from our utility. Few choose anything but the standard "averaged rate" where you pay the same price per KWH no matter when it's used. People are skeptical of time of use and variable peak pricing plans, even though in most cases it would actually save them money on their power bills.

Comment by Tom Delconte on March 2, 2012 at 4:56am

Jerry, thanks. Yes, I agree, and have just switched my generation supplier again, being careful to watch the details you mentioned.

Comment by jerry gentile on March 1, 2012 at 9:56am

i switched- a no brainer--just need to ensure all costs are included when comparing rates and no penalties for early exit