Disconnected By Deregulation
Posted by Sonja Ebron
No wonder it’s gotten more difficult to keep your lights on in deregulated areas. Residential natural gas customers in Georgia, electric customers in Texas, power and natural gas customers in New York and elsewhere have all paid much more for utilities after deregulation than before. We can now add Maryland to this sorry list.
According to The Capital, the local paper in Annapolis, Anne Arundel county officials are dealing with “a staggering increase” in the number of people needing help with electric bills. Supplier competition began two years ago in the territory of the former monopoly, Baltimore Gas & Electric, forcing household electric bills to jump 72 percent. The governor negotiated a one-time $170 credit with BGE’s parent company, Constellation Energy, which is slated to appear on September bills. Nevertheless, BGE has disconnected 12,000 people through the first five months of 2008, with 5,000 disconnections just in May (before it started getting hot in Baltimore). Despite the upcoming rebate, the company expects to disconnect 30,000 ratepayers this year, an increase of 30 percent over last year.
