By Stephen Janis
When Nancy Touchette discusses her rising electric bill on the MARC train commuting to her job in Washington, D.C., she can barely finish a sentence.
“I thought I was alone on this one, but people will just interrupt me and say, 'My bill tripled, too.' It’s like everyone is going through the same thing,” said the 57-year-old scientist.
The electricity bill for her two-bedroom home in Baltimore County increased from $260 in December, to roughly $790 in February – despite few changes in her consumption habits, she said.
“I’ve had the same TV set for four years. something is going on, I don’t know what it is, but I don’t buy that explanation,” she said of BGE official’s statement earlier this week blaming flat-screen televisions and unusually cold weather in December for the spike in utility bills.
Touchette is not alone.
“A year ago my bill was around $300 dollars,” said Denise Lowery, as she stands on the porch of her North Baltimore row home. “Now it’s $648 a month,” she said, holding up her bill.
“Every time you turn around, it goes up. I’m able to scrape by, but I don't know how people are making it.”
The recent spike in utility bills is one of the reasons Maria Alwline said the membership of her organization, The Maryland Coalition for BGE Reregulation, has swelled from 23 members in 2008 to more than 300.
“There has been a groundswell of people who come to our meetings now,” said Alwline, who ran unsuccessfully for City Council president in 2007. “People’s bills have tripled and in some cases quadrupled. I think you’ve got a company, Constellation, that is struggling, and they’re committing fraud.”
Alwline, who has been calling for re-regulation of Maryland utilities – which were deregulated in 1999 – said state legislators have told her privately they don’t know what to do.
“They just shrug their shoulders.”
BGE officials said complaining consumers are failing to take into account their own consumptions habits and the cold temperatures in December.
“The common thread that we’ve seen with most is an increase in usage. We believe the consumption increase is directly related to the colder weather,” Linda Foy, spokeswoman for BGE, wrote in an e-mail on Tuesday. “[Prices] are indeed higher than they were just a few years ago, for all customers, not just BGE’s. What’s different this year is the last few months have been among the coldest on record," Foy wrote. “It is likely that customers are paying closer attention to all of their bills than they did in the past."
BGE officials said this week that nearly 84,000 customers faced losing their electricity in April – nearly triple the number in the same predicament this time last year. State law prohibits utilities from disconnecting residents' power in the winter.
But the political will to reverse course on regulation may be tempered by the financial clout of Constellation Energy, the parent company of BGE. With nearly $500,000 in political contributions made by Constellation Energy Pac to state delegates, senators and gubernatorial candidates since 1999, according to the Maryland Campaign Finance Database, re-regulation, which the company opposes, may have tough going in the Maryland State Legislature.
"The massive campaign contributions are not surprising." said state Delegate Jill Carter, a longtime proponent of re-regulation. "Campaign finance reform is desperately needed. On this, and every issue, the people have no lobby and very little voice in Annapolis."
Carter said re-regulation was now the only option.
"The people "ratepayers" should not have to continue to bear the burden of unresponsive elected leaders and representatives. Reregulation coupled with a moratorium on further increases and shut-offs for good-faith customers is the only solution."
Harford County resident Brenda Watford, 40, an employee of Johns Hopkins Hospital, agreed.
“I feel like the legislature needs to step up. Electricity is like food: People can’t live without it but if the bills keep going up like this, they’ll have no choice.”
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We left Dec 18th so we were not home 8 days in Dec and received a BGE bill for 310.06. Dec 26- Jan 27th they estimated 418.36 then received a bill marked Dec 26- Feb 24th for 445.65 with a balance of 27.28. Well that would make my electric bill 222.83 for Jan and 222.83 for Feb and NO ONE WAS HOME? I hate to see when we return in April. I have always done my laundry and cleaning onoff peak hours what is our next step?
The actual meter readings indicated that my usage was 39 kWh/day for the last 28 days in the cycle, during the coldest temperatures of the month (Avg. ~30 degrees). Then they estimated that for the 6 days on the front end of the billing period I used 106 kWh/day when the avg. temperature was 44 degrees. Estimating in this fashion is not correctable by nature. They tried to slip one by me and got caught. They also proceeded to make it ever so frustrating to correct the obvious error and sent me numerous responses by mail and by phone indicating that my problem was with mother nature's cold temperature. In the end a person from thier investigation department, who concluded in a letter that she "found no irregularities" finally admitted to the obvious error when I called her asking her to qualify her findings with the meter reading and temperature data. In the end, they lopped off the 40% increase in my usage/bill and apologized. I say they should rot in hell. I suggest that if you can do some simple math, call BGE, ask for a supervisor, get the meter read/estimation data for the ENTIRE billing period and see if you can uncover a similar abuse of estimated charges. Estimating on the front end of a bill IS NOT corrected by later meter reads!!!! I would have never discovered this fraudulent use of estimating practices if I didn't demand ALL meter reading data for the month. I have no idea why they would take 2 reads in the month and estimate the dead space before the 1st reading. They could have just taken the difference from the last meter read, but they created the opportunity to abuse estimating practices in a way that is difficult to uncover and would never be made up by later meter reads.
The State getting their grubby paws in on it was THE CAUSE of the shock we are seeing now.
The STATE needs to leave it alone.
It pulled 1.5 kWh in 7 hours of being on.
At .16 per kWh for electric, that works out to about 2 1/2 cents an hour. Extrapolate that out to you use.
An older CRT type tv uses about 40 watts ON and about 4 watts OFF on stand by.
LCD computer screens are the same way.
This does not explain all the cost increase in bills but it does show that the new tvs draw about 5x the power as your old type.
If you don't like high energy bills, use less energy.
Investigative voice - I like your page as a whole, but is this really balanced journalism? It appears unnecesarily biased.