Connecticut's Consumer Counsel is advising that Connecticut residents who buy electricity from third-party retail electric suppliers should take a close look at their bills this month.
Elin Swanson Katz said in a press release that data provided to the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority shows that 86 percent of Eversource customers and 77 percent of United Illuminating customers paid more than the standard service rate in August if they used a retail electric supplier. Some customers paid prices as high as 23.7 cents per kilowatt hour.
Eversource’s standard service rate is 8.2 cents per kilowatt hour, while United Illuminating’s standard service rate is 9.12 cents per kilowatt hour. The rates are set through December 31 of this year.
The PURA report lists the names of 12 retail electric suppliers who charged at least 20 percent of their customers a rate of 13.9 cents per kilowatt hour or more in August.
Katz warned that switching to a retail electric supplier can be risky. From her press release:
Some suppliers are charging certain customers more than twice the standard service rate, even in the summer months. [The Office of Consumer Counsel] has determined that between January and August of this year, Connecticut customers of electric suppliers, as a group, paid more than $23 million more for electricity than if they had been on standard service. OCC will continue to update this number, as well as OCC’s Fact Sheet on the Electric Supplier Market provided on OCC’s website, as more data becomes available.
Legislation passed this year prohibits electric suppliers from signing up customers for variable rate contracts that can change monthly. It also prohibits suppliers from renewing existing contracts into variable rates.
The prohibition started this month, but applies only to new contracts or those renewed after October 1.
Leyda Quast is an intern at WNPR.
