Residential Customers

Columbia Gas of Maryland yesterday filed a proposal with the state's Public Service Commission that would offer about 36 percent of the utility's residential customers a choice in buying natural gas.The plan, which will be offered to 10,000 customers under a two-year pilot program beginning Nov. 1, is similar to one that Columbia Gas' sister company filed earlier this month in Pennsylvania. The program is expected to reduce customers' natural gas costs, said Gary J. Robinson, president and chief executive of Columbia Gas."

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.

Gov. Parris N. Glendening upped the ante in the electricity deregulation debate yesterday by calling for a 7.5 percent cut in residential rates, to last for five years, in legislation being written by the General Assembly.The governor's proposed rate cut pleased consumer advocates and environmentalists, but drew skepticism from leading legislators, and opposition from utilities and businesses who contend that such a cut would be too deep and last too long.With just four weeks left in the 1999 legislative session, Glendening is making a late entry into the electricity competition debate -- showing that he may be interested in passing deregulation, if it's on his terms.

As many as 300 Verizon customers in West Baltimore lost service Thursday after cables were cut, the company said. The outage to telephone and DSL service affected state government offices, small businesses and residents, Verizon spokeswoman Sandra Arnette said. Service was expected to be restored by midday Friday, she said. Arnette said the damage to equipment in an alley off West North Avenue near Pennsylvania Avenue was the first act of vandalism reported in Baltimore since Sunday, Aug. 7, when members of the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers began a strike after their contract expired, she said.

Talk about an electric jolt. The average bill for a Baltimore Gas and Electric customer will rise by 72 percent - or $743 a year - after July 1, the state utility commission said yesterday as it released the results of a reverse auction among suppliers to provide electricity to Maryland utilities. The increase for BGE's 1.2 million residential customers will be one of the biggest one-year price hikes in the nation. And yesterday's news was the most tangible evidence yet that the power market is quite different from the scenario that state lawmakers and regulators predicted seven years ago when they approved a deregulation plan intended to spur competition and lower prices.

Under a more severe termination policy, Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. has sharply increased cutoffs since 1996-1997 of service to residential customers who fall behind in paying their bills during the winter heating season.According to BGE filings with the Maryland Public Service Commission, residential gas and electric customer turnoffs leaped 1,918 percent from 332 in 1996-1997 during the winter heating season, which runs from Nov. 1 to March 31, to 6,702 terminations in 1997-1998.During the 1998-1999 season, there was a slight decline, to 5,089 terminations, but that was a rise of 1,433 percent over the cutoffs in 1996-1997.

ToadNet Inc. a privately owned Internet service provider located in Severna Park, has acquired Radicus Internet LLC, a Baltimore-based Internet service provider. The acquisition of Radicus Internet, which provides access and related services to business and residential customers in the mid-Atlantic region, further expands ToadNet's reach into the mid-Atlantic market. Radicus Internet's more than 1,300 business and residential customers gain access to ToadNet's full range of Internet services provided through its regional network.

The Maryland Public Service Commission reaffirmed its commitment yesterday to electric deregulation and customer choice - allowing residential customers to choose an alternative power supplier. The PSC statement was a response to a Jan. 16 report from the Office of the People's Counsel that said 18 months of deregulation had produced little in the way of competition or new services. Until there are options and clear consumer benefits, the OPC report recommended, the Maryland General Assembly should consider suspending electricity choice for the state's 1.8 million residential customers who could face higher prices when rate caps begin expiring in about two years.

In the first major examination of Maryland's effort to restructure the electricity market, a report released yesterday by the People's Counsel said that deregulation has failed to produce competition and new services for residential customers since it began 18 months ago. The report recommended that until there are clear consumer benefits, the Maryland General Assembly should consider suspending electricity choice for the state's 1.8 million residential customers...

The average Potomac Edison customer will see a $3.71 rate increase on the November utility bill, rather than the $8.63 requested in April, company officials said yesterday.Potomac Edison, which serves about 9,400 customers in Carroll County, has said a residential customer who uses 1,000 kilowatts of energy a month will now pay $74.46 each month rather than $70.75.Company officials won the increase -- the fifth requested this year -- by arguing that it was necessary to help pay for a scrubber system on its coal-burning power stations in West Virginia.

In its latest effort to grow its residential power business, Constellation Energy Group said Friday that it agreed to buy Houston-based StarTex Power for $142.5 million. The purchase gives the Baltimore company a presence in Texas, considered the most active competitive residential market in the country, and comes two weeks after Constellation acquired a Connecticut gas and electricity provider. StarTex Power has about 170,000 residential customers, while MXenergy gives Constellation more than 500,000 customers in 15 states and two provinces in Canada.

Baltimore Gas & Electric Co. customers are expected to save as much as $161 annually when rates begin to plunge this summer to their lowest level since a massive rate hike in 2006. Maryland ratepayers will enjoy lower electric bills starting in June — extending a downward trend that began last October and is expected to continue through 2012, according to BGE. The lower rates stem from cheaper prices obtained at a recent electricity supply auction — and reflect a global drop in commodity and energy prices.

Lower electricity rates next winter Residential customers of Baltimore Gas & Electric Co. can expect electricity rates to be lower next winter compared with the past one that resulted in increased complaints about higher-than-expected utility bills, state energy regulators said Thursday. The new projections are based on bids for electricity for two-year power contracts that begin Oct. 1. The recent bids from an auction completed Monday reflect lower wholesale energy prices. The actual rates will be released by June 1. However, BGE residential customers will pay $16 more on average for their annual bills from June to May 2010.

Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. customers will get a one-time break from rising electricity bills in September, when the utility begins distributing $170 credits as part of a plan approved by state utility regulators yesterday. The bill credits were contained in a $2 billion settlement that state lawmakers approved last month to resolve a dispute with BGE's corporate parent, Constellation Energy Group Inc. Lawmakers passed the deal in the final hours of the legislative session, ending a long-simmering feud over terms of the 1999 deal to move the state to a deregulated power market.

Sheirmiar White launched Ohms Energy Co. in spring 2006 with a promise to beat Baltimore Gas and Electric's rates, hoping to show that deregulation could deliver lower electricity prices. Instead, Ohms last week became the latest example of how alternative energy providers have struggled to gain a toehold in Maryland despite BGE's 70 percent rate increase over the past year. The state Public Service Commission indefinitely suspended Ohms' license to sell power Friday after it fell behind on payments to suppliers and disclosed that it could no longer serve its 2,100 customers.

Seeking to avoid the turmoil BGE underwent over plans to sharply raise electricity rates last year, the utility serving thousands of homes in parts of Howard and Carroll counties and Western Maryland has asked regulators for permission to increase rates this spring -- well before price caps expire. The idea, Allegheny Power says, is to impose two 15 percent surcharges and use the money plus interest to soften the blow for consumers when the company's price caps take effect in 2009. Those affected by the plan will get a chance starting this week to offer their opinions to the state's Public Service Commission.

Even as they offered support for legislation that would create a task force to monitor electricity deregulation, regulators, utilities and energy suppliers urged state lawmakers yesterday to be patient as competition develops in Maryland. The state "must stay the course" and allow the 1999 deregulation law to "stand the test of time," said industry representatives at a joint hearing held by two powerful legislators who recently introduced a bill to create a joint oversight committee on electric customer choice and competition.

ELECTRICITY CUSTOMERS across the state are in for a shock. Beginning this summer, a 5-year-old freeze on prices begins to thaw for residential users in the Washington suburbs and on the Eastern Shore. Rates are estimated to rise as much as 35 percent. Some state lawmakers had hoped to cushion the blow by allowing county and municipal governments to negotiate prices on behalf of residential customers so they could take advantage of their collective buying power in the newly deregulated electricity market.

Seeking to avoid the turmoil BGE underwent over plans to sharply raise electricity rates last year, the utility serving thousands of homes in parts of Howard and Carroll counties and Western Maryland has asked regulators for permission to increase rates this spring --well before price caps expire. The idea, Allegheny Power says, is to impose two 15 percent surcharges and use the money plus interest to soften the blow for consumers when the company's price caps expire in 2009. Those affected will get a chance, starting this week, to offer their opinions on the plan to the state's Public Service Commission.

A decade after competition was introduced, long-distance phone rates had fallen by half, air fares by more than a fourth and trucking rates by a fourth. But a decade after the federal government opened the electricity business to competition, the market has not produced such a decline. Instead, more rate increase requests are pending now than ever before, said Jim Owen, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, the association for the investor-owned utilities that provide about 60 percent of the nation's power.