Electricity

Maryland's Public Service Commission struck back at an industry proposal to change the rules for wholesale electricity auctions, saying the plan would protect industry profits and block construction of new generators. The PSC "strongly protested" the proposed change before federal regulators, the agency said in a prepared statement. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is considering the proposal from the PJM Power Producers Group, an industry consortium that includes Constellation Energy, owner of Baltimore Gas & Electric.

Baltimore Gas & Electric certainly isn't likely to win any popularity contests. It secured a rate increase from the Public Service Commission in February - its second in the last three years - and turned around and filed a request for another one on Friday. And at the same time, the utility is asking the PSC for what may be unprecedented in Maryland: a surcharge on customers' monthly bills to pay for improvements to the electrical grid in advance. But as little as we may like it, the truth is that failing to make investments in maintaining the grid and improving its reliability is costing us dearly, too. It's just a harder cost to figure than the one that shows up at the bottom of our electric bills every month.

More Marylanders than ever are dumping standard utility service and buying electricity from independent producers. Unfortunately they've been making those decisions based partly on flawed information. They are relying on a "price to compare" for the standard offer from Baltimore Gas & Electric and other utilities that's often outdated, confusing or both. "If shopping persists, somebody will have to fix this," I blogged in February. On Tuesday, the Public Service Commission moved to do so, launching hearings on how to ensure that consumers can get good electricity information without having a master's degree in finance and a seat on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Robert M. Douglass, former chief engineer of Baltimore Gas & Electric Co.'s Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant, died Monday of cancer at his home in Port Republic, Calvert County. He was 88. The son of an electrical engineer and a homemaker, Robert Mann Douglass was born in Hartford, Conn., and raised in Wethersfield, Conn., where he graduated in 1942 from Wethersfield High School. He served as a paratrooper with the 11th Airborne in the Pacific and with occupying forces in Japan during World War II. After the war, he enrolled at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., where he earned his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1950.

Your Feb. 4 editorial ( "State of leadership" reflected a deep misunderstanding of the radical impact electric deregulation has had on Maryland's economy. By now, virtually everyone else understands that deregulation failed to meet its two major promises — lower rates and more reliable service. In his Thursday address, Gov. Martin O'Malley, a courageous champion of reregulation, simply noted what is plain to every ratepayer, particularly in the PEPCO service area. Since deregulation in 1999, rates have risen more than 70 percent — and the reliability of service has dropped.

Three in every 10 Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. customers are buying their electricity through third-party suppliers, continuing a steady trend of increases in recent years, the company said Wednesday. About 30 percent of electricity customers don't purchase their energy from BGE, up from 25 percent at the end of 2011 and 18 percent at the end of 2010, the company said. BGE's natural-gas customers are less likely to switch to third-party providers, though more have done so in the last few years - 22 percent, up from 13 percent at the end of 2010.

E verybody knew the recession would cut demand for energy. But some power executives have been surprised at how much. Electricity use in the region plunged 5 percent last year after falling 3 percent in 2008, according to PJM Interconnection, the company that manages the Mid-Atlantic electric grid and is based outside Philadelphia. Grid congestion and other factors that raise costs for consumers have fallen even more. The result is that power prices are declining more than experts were expecting even a few months ago. That means decent rate relief is arriving for customers of Baltimore Gas and Electric - in a year or so, for those who stick with BGE's standard product, or right now if you're willing to buy electricity from an alternative supplier.

A great deal on electricity landed in my mailbox last week. At least that's what it looked like. `"12 Month Guaranteed Low Rate," said the junk mail from MX Energy. "16% lower compared with BGE's current summer rate." And, in a big headline: "Save over $100 on your Electricity." But that's not true. You'll be lucky to save $30 over a year, not $100. The BGE summer rate MX is comparing against disappears in two months. That's about how long it could take MX to switch you over, in any event.

At the molecular level, electricity governs so much of the interaction that drives the life force of organisms. Photosynthesis, by which green plants use sunlight to make food; vision, which tells an animal what to eat, run from or mate with; or the explosive bursts of energy that move a predator to the dinner table. Even thought itself.Until recently, little was known about the electrical interactions of cells. Two German scientists, Erwin Neher, 47, and Bert Sakmann, 49, began two decades ago to perfect their "patch clamp" technique, which can detect currents crossing a cell's outer membrane that are so small they must be measured in trillionths of an ampere.

I'm all in favor of carbon-free electricity, and I applaud the Columbia Athletic Club's decision to install generators on its stationary exercise bikes. ( "Gym's exercise bikes generate electricity," Jan. 31) But their math is a bit suspect. Twenty such bikes used 20 times per week (presumably for one hour each time) will indeed generate about 3,600 kilowatt-hours of power over the course of a year, if each bike user produces about 175 watts while pedaling. Those are not unreasonable assumptions.

Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. said Thursday that energy prices will rise $6 a month for the typical residential electricity customer who doesn't use an outside power supplier, the first jump in energy prices in four years. That rise in costs, running from June through next May, comes on top of a distribution-rate increase approved in February. The state calculated that distribution rise at $3.33 a month for the average residential electricity customer, though BGE said typical customers - halfway between the biggest and smallest power-users - would pay $2.66 a month extra.

At one point Saturday, City Hospital in Martinsburg, W.Va., was so overwhelmed with patients injured on the Tough Mudder obstacle course that it had to turn people away from its emergency room. Two people who participated in the race in nearby Gerrardstown, W.Va., suffered heart attacks, according to Teresa McCabe of West Virginia University Hospitals-East, which runs City Hospital. Ten people had hypothermia, orthopedic injuries or head injuries. And two people were treated for drowning, including Avishek Sengupta, a 28-year-old Ellicott City man who died Sunday.

General Motors officially launched its new electric motor in White Marsh Tuesday, a milestone in U.S. manufacturing - and a key part of the company's bet that the electric-vehicle market is poised to grow. With production under way at the Baltimore County "eMotor" plant, GM says, the company is the first automaker to manufacture electric-drive motors domestically. The operation is small for now: About 20 employees make motors for the plug-in electric Chevrolet Spark EV, side by side with 27 robots.

An underground electrical fire was reported beneath the Sheraton City Center hotel Wednesday morning, but city emergency officials said it posed no danger to hotel guests. Half a dozen fire vehicles and a Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. truck surrounded the entrance to the hotel about 9:30 a.m, blocking several lanes of traffic in the 100 block of W. Fayette St. downtown. Hotel staff said guests had not been evacuated and were not affected. The Baltimore Mayor's Office of Emergency Management said via Twitter about 9:40 a.m. that firefighters were awaiting the power to be shut off before they could extinguish the fire.

Dennis H. McGinley Jr., a retired electrical engineer and model railroad enthusiast, died Tuesday of heart disease at Anne Arundel Medical Center. He was 73. The son of a Jersey Central Railroad yardmaster and a factory worker, Dennis Hayden McGinley Jr. was born and raised in Allentown, Pa., where he graduated in 1957 from Allentown Central Catholic High School. He served in the Air Force for four years until being discharged in 1961. He earned a bachelor's degree in 1970 in electrical engineering from Drexel University in Philadelphia, while working for Roeback Co. in Trevos, Pa. He also earned a master's degree in business administration in the 1980s from what is now Loyola University Maryland.

Stephen R. Krause, a software designer and inventor, died Friday at Levindale Hebrew Geriatric Center and Hospital from respiratory failure on his 76th birthday. Mr. Krause was born in Baltimore and raised in Forest Park. He was a 1955 graduate of Park School and attended the University of Maryland, College Park. Since he was a child, Mr. Krause demonstrated a profound interest in electricity and electric devices. He designed an automatic inventory control system that he called Epic for his father's uniform business.

State energy regulators have fined a Connecticut electricity supplier $100,000 after finding that it engaged in deceptive marketing practices, the Maryland Public Service Commission announced Friday. The commission also ordered North American Power and Gas to undertake a series of measures, including suspending all telemarketing activities in Maryland, to retain its license. The commission, responding to a complaint filed by its staff, held a hearing and concluded that NAP's advertisements contained four deceptive statements, such as there is "no contract to sign"; that NAP falsely stated that its terms and conditions were approved by state regulators; and that NAP failed to provide a "complete and accurate" price description in its terms and conditions, as well as the required PSC's toll-free number and Web address for complaints.

Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. customers will be paying higher rates this year, with the average bills rising by several dollars a month, to cover the cost of upgrading the utility's infrastructure. Maryland's Public Service Commission, which regulates the company, said Friday it approved an increase to distribution rates that will cost the average residential electricity customer an additional $3.33 a month and the average residential gas customer an extra $2.70 a month. The utility had sought larger rate increases.