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Yes, The Connecticut Retail Market Is Losing Customers, But It's Not the First Time
The Hartford Business Journal has a story reporting that, "For the first time since its inception, the alternative electricity supplier industry in Connecticut is losing customers."
This claim appears to be based on simply looking at migration data for solely the month of February since 2007. In this snapshot comparison, February 2014 was the first February in which competitive electric suppliers saw a decline in aggregate customer count versus the year-ago February.
However, while we in no way mean to minimize the challenges facing Connecticut electric suppliers, it's hardly the first time that the market has seen a net decline in customers served on competitive supply.
Nor is it the first time in recent memory (we're not relying on the 2006 drop of several thousand customers to default service from the state's then-only active residential supplier due to a challenging default service design)
In fact just last summer, EnergyChoiceMatters.com noted a sustained trend of steady monthly declines in shopping at both CL&P and UI during early 2013, click here for story
Although Matters' story was focused on residential losses, the market at that time was also seeing declines in commercial shopping and in aggregate shopping.
In fact, from December 31, 2012 to June 30, 2013, both CL&P and UI saw a net decline in customer accounts on competitive supply on a residential, non-residential, and aggregate basis.
That being said, the recent migration changes aren't pretty, with CL&P losing 11,000 customers on competitive supply from January 2014 to February 2014 alone. Still, it's not the first time the market has seen a decline in shopping, and changes are being driven more by churn at individual suppliers, not aggregate churn.
Indeed, several suppliers saw healthy growth of 500 to nearly 1,000 customer accounts at CL&P from January 2014 to February 2014.
It's just that these gains were more than offset by suppliers seeing an up to 20% decline in their customer base from January 2014 to February 2014. For example, Discount Power saw its CL&P customer count fall by nearly 5,000 accounts from January 2014 to February 2014, or nearly 20% versus its January 2014 total. Public Power saw its CL&P customer count decease by 3,500 (5%), while Town Square Energy saw its CL&P customer count fall by 1,700 accounts (22%).
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March 18, 2014
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Copyright 2010-13 EnergyChoiceMatters.com
Reporting by Paul Ring • ring@energychoicematters.com
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