These new numbers compiled from earlier this year, combined with “astounding” shopping rates in Pennsylvania’s PPL Electric Utilities service territory, are the latest evidence of competition delivering lower-cost competitively priced electricity to consumers.

Nearly 68 percent of customer demand and 58 percent of total usage in Washington D.C. was met with power from a competitive supplier, noted the District of Columbia Public Service Commission. More impressively, nearly 85 percent of commercial & industrial demand and 78 percent of usage was provided by competitive suppliers.

In Texas, the nation’s largest competitive retail market, over 50 percent of residential consumers and about two-thirds of the total load across all customer segments is being served by a non-incumbent supplier, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.

Shopping in Rhode Island neared a third of all customers in February, with 29.4 percent of all load being serviced by alternative power suppliers, the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission announced. In New Jersey, hourly rate shopping by large commercial & industrial customers grew to 86 percent of total load and 68.5 percent of all accounts, according to the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities.

These numbers are yet more evidence that our nation’s well-structured competitive electricity markets are promoting competition among energy market participants and providing economic benefits for customers

Competition Can Drive Down Prices
The competitive electricity market brings structure and discipline around electricity costs. This enables customers to switch to a competing supplier who can offer the most competitive supply services, or provide alternative energy solutions. Essentially, competition can drive down prices, which has a direct impact on the local Illinois economy and the health of businesses, universities, hospitals, etc.

Competition Spurs Job Creation
With more than 20 active competitive retail suppliers in the Illinois marketplace, thousands of jobs have been created to support the energy industry. Retail suppliers have established themselves in the Illinois market by opening offices and hiring staff to participate in the competitive markets. Businesses and institutions that have energy choice also have increased budget certainty and the ability to shop for lower energy costs—forces that make it easier to create jobs.

Brokers Help Companies Make Good Decisions

Despite the fact that Illinois has been deregulated for ten years, the use of an electricity broker helps customers make the best decisions.  Since electricity pricing changes daily, it is a challenge to obtain accurate and comparable price quotations from a large number of suppliers, since prices must be collected at the exact same time.  Then there is the complexity introduced by the varied contract language and terms that often result in a different invoiced price than a customer expects.  The use of an experienced broker helps sift through all this confusion and assures that the customer obtains the best electricity price for the desired contract term length and financial goals in mind.

“In my opinion, the new emerging ‘Energy Services and Technology Industry’ is poised for explosive growth over the next three years”. “In my opinion, the new emerging ‘Energy Services and Technology Industry’ is poised for explosive growth over the next three years,” said Goodman. “States like New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio have been steadily improving their regulations to permit competitive energy suppliers to offer real savings and competitively-priced energy services and technologies to all consumers. This is especially good news for residential and small business customers, who historically have not had the opportunity to shop for their energy supplies. Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Ohio and New York have adopted a series of new energy policies which have allowed hundreds of thousands of small consumers to shop for energy in ways that were not available to them before,” added Goodman.

“The recession has forced consumers of all sizes to take a hard look at their energy costs, and our members have been quick to respond with an entire slate of energy services, pricing and technology offerings. EIA statistics just released confirm that consumers are responding to competitive offerings in record breaking numbers,” Goodman reports.

“As price caps continue to come off of electric utility rates later this year in Pennsylvania and both Maryland and Illinois begin to implement new utility billing practices, this could easily set the stage for many years of record growth for this emerging new highly competitive energy services and technology industry. At the same time, the growth in ‘Smart Grid’ technologies will save consumers additional energy costs. As more States enact progressive rules permitting consumers to choose their energy suppliers without penalties, it becomes an engine for economic growth both locally and nationally,” said Goodman.

This sentiment is in sharp contrast to legislation currently under consideration by the Connecticut General Assembly that would dampen competition in Connecticut’s wholesale and retail electricity marketplace which was established more than a decade ago along with four other New England States.

“These results show that a super majority of slightly more than 75 percent of consumers believe that competition among private companies is the best way to lower electricity prices, rather than creating greater state authority over the electricity industry,” said NEEA’s Executive Director Paul G. Afonso.  “The findings offer important guideposts to the legislature regarding the opinion of ratepayers who are also voters.”

The survey also found that 75% of consumers favor maintaining a requirement that electric companies provide information to consumers on how to choose alternative electricity suppliers. The consensus is that consumers need more information rather than less on electricity choice and competition options.

A clear majority of consumers (83 percent) expressed preference for the current billing method of receiving one monthly electric bill, rather than two, if electricity is purchased from an alternative supplier – a change also considered this legislative session.

“The survey also found that 75% of respondents felt it was extremely important that the Legislature focus on job creation and economic development, while just 24% had the same feeling about additional regulation of the electricity companies.   “The Legislature seems out of touch with the concerns of consumers,” said Afonso.

The telephone survey was performed for NEEA by Opinion Dynamics Corporation of Waltham, MA.  Interviewing was conducted between April 14 – 21 among 241 registered voters (consumers) in Connecticut as part of a broader, region-wide survey.  The margin of error on the Connecticut portion of the sample is ±6.3%

The question-by-question results are available on NEEA’s website. (www.newenglandenergyalliance.org).

To contract your electricity now, visit www.bcc-energy.com.

For audio conferencing, the traditional approach has been to use a pay-per-minute bridging service or use an internal conference bridge.  If you are paying by the minute, the big question is what your rate is.  BCC can help you get a better rate that you have today, in almost every instance.  While you might think your rate is low, you will never know without an outside opinion.

A new technology that is booming is the use of web-based conferencing systems.  These allow you to view everyone with desktop video, while utilizing VoIP to eliminate the per minute phone charges.  Many provider charge a flat rate per month, which can control your costs while increasing your communications capabilities.

Finally, the more traditional video conferencing systems have come down in price and increased in quality.  High Definition video is now reasonably priced, with bandwidth requirements of just 384K to 512K with some vendors.

For more information on how to reduce these costs or for independent support in procuring these technologies, contact Better Cost Control at 617-332-7767 x150.

To avoid paying too much, include a mechanism to measure market price benchmarks to allow your prices to go down, if the market dictates.  This will allow you to avoid being locked into a disadvantageous agreement.  Otherwise, years may go down without you realizing that you have been overpaying…and it will be too late.

On average, businesses that implemented automatic power management reduced their power consumption by 20%.  That translates to $100,000 for a company with 1,000 desktop computers,

Turning systems on and off can be automated with a variety of software applications for this purpose.  Demand for such software has skyrocketed.  These applications have the intelligence to know when it is OK to shut down a system.   Products typically require a client application installed on each machine. Typical cost is $40 per desktop. 500 PCs at an electricity rate of 17 cents a kwh (using the average of 200 watts) can save $75,000/year by operating only 12 hours Monday thru Friday. The return on investment would be roughly three months.