electric rates

[mm]

At least in Maryland, electric rates go up in June between 40 and 80%, when the caps come off, because of deregulation. This sounds like it applies to the whole country, but I don't know.

[George E. Cawthon]

Nope. Electric rates in most states are controlled by the state utilities commission, which has to hold hearings, etc. before every rate increase or decrease. What happens in Maryland is irrelevant to the State of Montana.

[Dr. Hardcrab]

You must have PEPCO or BG&E because ours went up in Jan 2005 and again this past December. (I'm in SoMd and we have a co-op)

[scott21230]

It's just BGE. We have been paying below market rates for some time, and now we get to pay the same high rates that everyone else pays. Presumably this is because in many places they use natural gas to generate electricity instead of much cheaper nuclear.

On an aside note, when looking at my last BGE bill of $80, only $5.03 of it was for electricity anyway. With all the hook up charges and other nusiance fees and taxes, a 50% increast in electric rates would have not affected my bill by much. It will in the summer though.

[mm]

Yeah, you're both right. I must have missed it, or forgotten, when I guess it was the Maryland leglislature or PSC put caps on the bill. Since I didn't think Md. did it, that left the country as a whole.

Sorry for giving people a jolt, if I did.

Wow. I'll have to pay more attention to my bill.

Something that might interest everyone, even if doesn't apply to them now, is that BGE has a plan to make making the payments easier.

You don't have to pay the whole thing, and they'll charge you 5% a year on the part you don't pay, which is more than most people are earning in a checking account, or even a CD iiuc. They call that a plan.

And not only that, if you don't want this plan, you have to opt OUT. Otherwise you get the plan. OK now I'm confused. The news didn't say they send you a bill for the whole thing and you opt out by paying the whole thing. And the news didn't say they only send a bill for the minimum. Surely they will send a bill that wll indicate the whole thing, even if there is also a line with a minimum amount to pay. I may have to wait until I get the bill in June to know what they mean by opt-out. Unless one of you clever guys know.

I know BGE has one nuclear power plant, Calvert Cliffs, in southern Maryland. There is also another on the southern NJ coast and one in Pa. west of here, but I don't know if BGE** buys electricity from them or if doing so would get the nuclear rate.

Formerly called BG&E, Baltimore Gas and Electric. A better name if you ask me.

There is also the Conowingo dam on the Susquenhanna river at or close to US Route 1.. I don't know how much electricity that makes.

[JohnR66]

Here in Oheeho, I got a note from the utility saying how long rates were fixed and to be getting ready fo you know what... I currently pay 10 cents per kwh. John

[mm]

Tuns out Maryland BGE has had price caps for six years, and electricity has gone up 72% in that time, so there will be a 72% increase.

Which I think they said would average 60 or 64 dollars a month!!!. Could that be right That would mean the average person pays more than

100 dollars a month now. I really should look at my bill. I can't believe it is that high,

WBAL news said that gas, oil, and gasoline has gone up 130 to 160 percent during the same time, I forget the exact numbers but something like that.. Still, I assume they will eventually let BGE get back any money it has lost over the 6 years by not charging market rates.

BTW, BGE says nothing about this I could find on its webpage, and the bill payment part of the webpage is the worst I've ever seen.** Maybe that's because the rates are so low and they don't spend any money on their on-line data processing department!

**Biggest example. The "Pay my bill" url isn't clear about it, but it says what one's bill was the last time a bill was issued. If you pay online, that has no effect on the amount that shows. So if you're not sure that the payment went through, and you check back to see if the money owed has gone down, it never will. There isn't even a text warning about this.

Also, because of a crash, I lost my logon info to the webpage. It used my email address and account number to send me my User-id, but it wouldn't send me my password without the name of my first pet. I only had one thing that might be called a pet, and that name didn't work. So I wrote them 2 months ago, and they never replied or changed the way the page worked.

[Goedjn]

It doesn't matter. What they wanted wasn't actually the name of your first pet, but the answer that you typed in that box when you set up your account. (or filled in the form, or whatever.) It's like things that ask for your mother's maiden name.

Unless you're talking to the Department of Vital Records, the sensible thing to do is lie.

[mm]

Well, I did try. I entered Oscar and oscar, and they didnt' work and other than them I have no idea what to enter.

LOL Unfortunately, I lied when I signed up for my first Yahoo email account, about birthday and one other thing, and didn't keep notes where I could find them,and when I lost the password, I couldn't remember what I had said and never got the account back again.

MyHomeRep@bge wrote me today, just 12 hours after I wrote them, and reset my password, but didnt' say a word about the original instructions to write techrep@bge , which never replied to me at all, or the other problems.

I'll see if it asks me to choose a pet's name when I enter a new password. No it didn't, but it' might be still using the old one.

Maybe my bill is interesting.

**rate will go up by 74% in June.

type of da KwH Avg Avg outside reading ys dly temp use Feb 06 Actual 28 549 19.6 39 Cost 45.00**, Jan 06 Actual 34 659 19.4 39

Feb 05 Actual 29 677 23.3 32 Last year 7 degrees

colder (I had a warm air leak last year. Not sure how big. or how much extra electicity that would use since I have oil heat.) I can't tell if the difference in Februarys is how much I used the lights, or how much the 7 degree difference in outside temp accounts for the difference from 19.6 to 23.3 KwH/day, from 549 to 654 KwH (28 days for each year.).

**rate will go up by 74% in June. My bills for the previous two months totalled 102 dollars. I live alone in a townhouse, electric stove, electric hot water, oil heat. I use microwave. I don't cook much. . I guess the biggest single use, maybe the majority of my use, is hot water for daily tub baths. Maybe I should cut back.

If I heat 50 gallons of water from maybe 40 or 50 degrees outside in the winter to 120 or 140 (I forget), I should be able to calculate how many KwH that takes out of the 19.6 KwH I use every day.

100 degrees F delta X 50 gallons = x KwH ??

mm

[scott21230]

True, the BGE webpage does not in any explain the 72% deal. I have no idea if there is a 72% inclease in the electric only part of the bill (the $5 quotes above) or the rate hike is so high that the average overall bill will be 72% higher. Since writing that part above I have found many other people who say mow much of their total bill is really nusiance fees that won't change (like close to 50%) so if it's only for the electricity, then a 72% increase really isn't so bad. However, if the 11.5 cents/kwh is the real new rate, than that's almost 3X what I'm paying now. As per their usual the news media is not reporting this correctly.

[mm]

The online statement only had totals. I forgot about the question of how much is attributed to electric use, as opposed to fixed charges.. I'll have to check my printed bill, and then like you I'll have to wait to see what items increase.

[Jim Elbrecht]

-snip-

I just got my National Grid Bill [Upstate NY]-- as I was filing it I looked at the last 3 bills-- [first number is what the bill says I'm paying per KWh - second, bracketed number is after all the surcharges, taxes, delivery, etc] December;

11.8cents/KWh - [12.5cents/KWh] January; 8.8cents/KWh - [14.6cents/KWh] February; 7.9cents/KWh - [16cents/KWh]

So my cost per KWh has gone down nearly 30%, but what I'm paying has gone up 22%.

I have the second number in a spreadsheet along with my electric usage going back to 1995. Until January the *real* cost has stayed between 10.5 & 12.9cents/KWh for the last 9 years.

In NY utilities are regulated by a Public Service Commission- they approved the buyout of Niagara Mohawk by National Grid and said that National Grid would lower electric costs to the consumer. Well, they lowered the price per KWh on the bill, anyway.

Jim

[kevinyates]

Does anyone know when BGE will collect the full %100 percent of the rate increase that went into effect in July? Currently they are collecting %15 of the increase as directed by the state of Maryland....

KY