PPL Electric - Electricity Deregulation Shouldn't Increase your Bill

What does it mean for you as a consumer when electricity gets deregulated? In theory it should mean that there is more competition among electricity companies in your area. This should further mean that the companies would want to offer lower prices to beat out the competition. That means that deregulation should result in lower monthly electric bills. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. Some utility companies actually increase their customers’ rates after deregulation. The good news is that you can choose to work with a business that doesn’t do that to you.

Take a look at PPL Electric if you want to see how utility companies can cause harm to their customers as a result of deregulation. When the electricity rate caps were lifted at the beginning of the year, changes began occurring in the way that this utility company charges its customers for electricity use. What does this mean for the customers? In simple terms, many of these people are going to be shocked to see bills at the end of the month that could be as much as 30% higher than what they are used to paying.

How did this happen? A few different factors came in to play. For one thing, the cost of fossil fuels is high so electricity companies argue that they aren’t able to significantly lower prices. Many companies moved out of state to where they could pay lower prices, which resulted in less competition for PPL. Moreover, there was a big marketing push arguing that the higher rates only reflect a normal increase that is to be expected after a long-term rate cap. They say that rates didn’t’ go up since 1996 so it’s reasonable for them to go up now. And people are buying that.

However, you shouldn’t get sucked into all of this because it doesn’t have to be this way. It is possible for utility companies to sacrifice in small ways to allow them to offer lower rates to their customers. And it is possible for increased competition to allow these lower prices to thrive in the market. It’s just a matter of the customer demanding it. How do you do that? You choose to work with the businesses that are committed to providing high-quality electricity service without the high cost.  This may not be the norm yet but that doesn’t mean that we can’t strive for it. In the meantime, keep working to avoid wasting electricity so that your personal bills remain low.