Last week, BGE posted the February "commodity" price for natural gas: 89.71 cents per therm. That's the cheapest for the standard BGE product since October 2007. The plunge in market energy costs is starting to show up in BGE's retail prices. Ninety cents per therm is 14 percent lower than BGE's December price and 43 percent lower than the high of $1.58 reached in July. (This is your raw fuel price. Delivery charges are added.)
But the only BGE customers who will benefit from this plunge are those who didn't sign up for a fixed-price deal with a third-party supplier such as BGE Home (different from but related to BGE), Washington Gas Energy Services, etc.
For anybody stuck with these fixed-price deals (typically you have to lock in for a year), it still might make sense to cancel and go back to BGE's default price - even if there is an early-termination fee. It's a recession. Don't pay more for energy than you have to.
