Pennsylvania Passes 1,000,000 Customer Mark in Competitive Electricity Market

It’s official - Pennsylvania has passed the 1 million customer mark in electricity shopping.  According to the latest weekly update on the Pa. Power Switch website (www.PaPowerSwitch.com), the total number of customers switching to an electric generation supplier as of March 23, 2011, was 1,001,062.

Leading the way with the highest percentage of customers shopping is
tiny Pike County Power & Light, with 73% of its customers shopping.  Among the larger companies, PPL is out in front at 37.5%, which equates to 526,000 customers – 449,403 of whom are residential customers.  In a not too distant second place among larger companies is Duquesne, with 24.5% of its customers shopping.  This equates to 126,000 residential customers.   PECO has 16%, or 199,800 residential customers shopping, but given that its customers have been shopping for only a few months, that number is likely to grow substantially.  In all, for the majority of the Commonwealth, the numbers are quite impressive and evidence the strong support of the competitive electricity industry by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission and Pennsylvania’s electric distribution companies. These figures also are strong evidence for the notion that when it comes to competition in the electric and gas business, if you build a competitive market, the marketers will come.

The same momentum is not present in the natural gas markets, where switching has languished at about 200,000 total customers statewide.  The PUC has undertaken a number of regulatory initiatives that should help improve these numbers when the changes finally come on line.