A few years ago, when electricity cost up to 80 percent less after 11 p.m., Suni and Andy Grosko's washer, dryer and other appliances mainly worked the night shift.
The Baltimore County couple probably saved thousands of dollars over the years by taking great advantage of Baltimore Gas and Electric Co.'s "time- of-use" plan, which gave big discounts for off-peak kilowatts. But these days, when the price for after-hours juice isn't much lower than that of the daytime product, their appliances are just as likely to be on at lunchtime as at midnight.
"Right now I'm running my dishwasher," Suni Grosko said the other afternoon. "Prior to today I would have made sure it was run last night." Under new BGE rates that took effect July 1, she said, the savings for nighttime use "is so negligible that it doesn't make any difference to me."
That's a problem. Not just for the Groskos but for the grid and electricity customers across Maryland.
Now that electricity rates have soared and households need every break they can get, shrinking discounts for off-peak use have removed what might have been an effective way to cope. This occurs just as the increasingly strained system needs to encourage after-hours use to forestall potential blackouts.
Having kilowatt prices that reward families for shifting consumption to low-demand hours "is really, critically important," says Dan Watkiss, a Washington lawyer who represents generation companies, power marketers and energy financiers. "Smart state regulators and politicians should be all over this issue."
About 78,000 of BGE's 1.1 million residential accounts have signed up for time-of-use billing. But the money they save by timing the dishwasher to start at midnight or getting up at 6 a.m. to run the dryer has become, for many, negligible. (Other BGE customers pay a flat price no matter what time of day they use electricity, and they have little incentive to switch now.)
In 1999, according to bills Suni Grosko saved, BGE's summertime rate for kilowatts burned from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. was about 3 cents an hour. (That sounds right, says Wayne Harbaugh, BGE's manager of pricing and regulatory services.)
That was almost 40 percent less than the "intermediate" rate, charged from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. and 8 p.m. to 11 p.m.
And it was 80 percent lower than the peak rate from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Nonsummer off-peak savings were similarly huge. The gaps narrowed during the six-year rate freeze that ended this summer but were still substantial.
