Electricity Price Increases

WinterDeere · Wednesday at 11:57 AM

kenmbz said:
This is short term contracts that by law need a notification of end.

Yeah, I can see that being a problem. I've noticed that very recently, even when viewing online, some pages giving an "introductory rate" for various contracts fail to disclose the long-term rate to which your account will default after the introductory period ends. It's not ideal.

But this always forces me to either dig further or walk away, never sign up blindly, ignorant of what they might be charging me after the first 3 months promotional rate ends. It's hard to take anyone seriously, when they claim they had no idea the rate would go up after the promotional period.

kenmbz · Wednesday at 12:20 PM

The choice is 11-14c for dist or keep moving contracts for 7c.
So its a huge savings.
If they can offer 6mths or a year at a lower rate, why they can't just let me know new rate and make it a bump instead of doubling it, it's just a scam.
None of the dist companies give a real rate and give any concern about presenting a new realistic rate at end of contract.
They all just double the current rate to see if they can get it.

WinterDeere · Wednesday at 12:54 PM

kenmbz said:
The choice is 11-14c for dist or keep moving contracts for 7c.
So its a huge savings.
If they can offer 6mths or a year at a lower rate, why they can't just let me know new rate and make it a bump instead of doubling it, it's just a scam.
None of the dist companies give a real rate and give any concern about presenting a new realistic rate at end of contract.
They all just double the current rate to see if they can get it.

You're definitely more well-versed in this than me. Last time I went shopping for electric, when I moved almost 15 years ago, we could only shop for generation. Distribution was fixed by territory, either PECO or PPL.

kenmbz · Wednesday at 2:41 PM

WinterDeere said:
You're definitely more well-versed in this than me. Last time I went shopping for electric, when I moved almost 15 years ago, we could only shop for generation. Distribution was fixed by territory, either PECO or PPL.

you are correct, I am with PECO for distribution and it is generation I shop for.
The difference in price for generation can be 2 to 3 times the cheapest price, and I never knew there were so many generation companies from NRG to ones that might just be two hamsters in a cage

Contracts from Monthly, 3 months, 6 months, yearly, 18 months etc.

WinterDeere · Wednesday at 2:47 PM

kenmbz said:
I never knew there were so many generation companies from NRG to ones that might just be two hamsters in a cage

And the thing so many non-tech folks fail to realize is that they're not buying power directly from company XXX, but rather controlling what fraction of your utility's total load comes from that company.

If 20% of the utility's customers buy their power generation from company XXX, then the utility buys 20% of their generation capacity from that company. But the electrons knocked free by your favorite hamster have relatively small odds of actually finding their way to your particular wall socket.

Oaktree · Wednesday at 4:34 PM

kenmbz said:
The difference in price for generation can be 2 to 3 times the cheapest price, and I never knew there were so many generation companies from NRG to ones that might just be two hamsters in a cage

Last time I checked here, the difference between suppliers was negligible...a couple cents a kwh one way or another. With the relatively small amount of power we use any savings would be minimal. As it is, distribution costs are double the actual energy cost, and wouldn't change since it's based on usage.