Does your electricity provider charge a fee for buying power from another supplier?

Mine doesn’t. I live in an area served by an EMC (non-profit, electricity membership cooperative). We don’t have any choice of energy delivery—the EMC is acts under certain rules (presumably because it is a membership organization) that let it control power throughput.

For whatever it’s worth, my EMC sells power substantially cheaper than Georgia Power (the for-profit people in nearby counties).

But look, large corporations are scum. They cheat you and lie about it. Why are you surprised?

I don’t think I pay an extra fee when the power is supplied from a separate company from the local power delivery company.

Though my bill has gone up because both parties charge a fixed “Monthly Customer Charge” and both companies charge more.

My latest bill for a small apartment (167 kWh)
$17.29 Delivery
$12.84 Supply
$2.89 Taxes & Fees

Delivery = Our former monopoly maintains the lines, delivers power to the end user, reads the meter and sends the bill.
Supply = The power is fed into the grid by various generators.

Disclaimer: I am not in New York State, and you’re probably buying at least part of your electricity from my province. :)

I agree, it’s tough to wade through the information about this online. From what I can see here from RG & E, there is a choice between “retail access” (pricing by an ESCO) and “non-retail access” (pricing based on hourly forecasts) pricing.

According to this 2004 annual report from Energy East, the choice between different pricing systems was made by individual customers. It describes a voluntary choice of pricing system, but with restrictions – so I guess accounts that did not qualify were never given a choice (from my first link, “A customer who has not chosen an option and for whom RG&E has not received a retail access enrollment from an ESCO will default to Hourly Pricing.”). In the annual report, EE planned a freeze on all delivery charges, but implemented the retail access surcharge. They don’t explicitly say it is to make up the shortfall, but I guess that must be why they did it. The report covers their plans until 2008, but I couldn’t find a report that begins directly after the end of that freeze. Maybe you can turn one up to find out what happened next.

I notice that in this 2006 report on utility case decisions, RG & E is the only company on the list to add details for such a surcharge (see footnotes) – and that they also add a complementary charge to gas clients (as a “gas merchant function charge”). It may be that utilities in other states simply lump all such charges together. But it sounds to me from skimming articles on recent utilities competition in NY State that they are trying to balance long-term price freezes with smaller-scale rising costs. This kind of surcharge is probably an attempt at that.

It sure is difficult (if not impossible) to determine. I am wondering if this all is an exercise in futility. If the ESCO is cheaper RGE can just tack on a “Alternate Shopper Surcharge” and we would not have any choice. Hey, the CEO needs $ to pay for Little Brittney’s new pony.

I sure would like to know. I might run an experiment with a neighbor. We’ll flip a coin to see who gets to switch. Or, if he has a preference, I’ll take the other option.

I’m willing to bet we will be within 1% of each other at the end of a year.

@LuckyGuy “I’m willing to bet we will be within 1% of each other at the end of a year.”

This is probably true – if you were running the company, you certainly wouldn’t offer one choice that was much cheaper than the other, with no discernible difference in service. The value they’re offering is likely a perceived one – “freedom”.

This is not related to your question, but I just wanted to say, I can emphasize. I have RG&E as my electric supplier. I suppose I can’t complain much, as I don’t use that much electricity, but I am awaiting my bill and feeling nervous because I have been using my electric heater some. sigh

Empathize?

@seekingwolf I live in the land of cheap electricity, but even I’m not looking forward to that first bill, on my grad student salary. It’s all relative, I guess.

sorry, stupid autocorrect

Actually, I spoke too soon. After my last post, an email came in alerting me of my new bill. I only have to pay $26. Mind you, I’ve been running my heater on occasion, my dishwasher, my stove/oven, my portable washer, and my portable dryer. It’s the heater that I was worried about. I have been using it only when I can’t get warm with 2 blankets and then I only run it for 4 hours. Hmm. I got lucky this time.

That’s pretty good! Do you pay monthly, or every two months?

Monthly. How about you?

We’re billed every two months. They offer a billing system based on actual usage, or one that spreads out the projected cost (based on past usage) over a year and divides the payments up equally – so the winter bills are not such a great shock. I’ve never used the latter type of plan, although I suspect most people do.

I am in a small apartment with just me, so my usage isn’t that great. If I lived in a house with others and had greater usage, u would definitely enroll in the 12 plan to spread it out.