COMED wants to charge you for what you might use, not what you do use
Utilities are monopolies that regulators review to ensure they are spending more to provide the essential service and not collecting more than is needed to do so.
COMED, Chicago’s electric monopoly, wants more money and is proposing a new way to collect it from home owners.
Currently, you pay based on how much energy you use in any given bill period.
However, COMED wants you to pay that PLUS what’s called demand based pricing.
Demand based rates have been a component for industry for a long time. When industry start and stops large machines it can draw a lot of power all at once. This type of load can be hard for a utility to manage across many, many industries.
However, homeowners do not start large machines. We start TVs and AC units. Nothing that a large utility cannot handle. So why charge for demand? Because they want additional revenue because we are using less electricity as lighting and homes become more efficient.
Regulators should say No. Demand rates will reduce incentive to save money on energy usage for residential users.
Realgy Energy Services is a registered Retail Energy Marketer in the states of Illinois, Michigan and Indiana. We offer Service Plans that will provide electric and natural gas at wholesale pricing direct to customers without any utility markup. Our Service Plans work with the local utility to provide seamless service and annual energy savings. Service Plans include Guaranteed SavingsTM, ManagedPriceTM, ManagedGreenTM Index, Fixed and PriceAssuranceTM.
Additional Information:
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2016/05/17/bill-would-drastically-change-way-comed-charges-customers/