Pennsylvania Continues Slow Recovery in Residential Migration Growth

Pennsylvania saw another week of marginal improvement in the growth rate of residential migration to competitive supply, according to the February 27 stats from the Pennsylvania PUC.

Link to 2/27/13 Weekly Migration Report

Matters has also developed a comparison of the migration levels from the 2/20/13 Report to the 2/27/13 Report.

Link to Matters' Comparison of Weekly Migration

The aggregate increase in residential customers on competitive supply from about February 21 to about February 27 (reporting date varies slightly by utility) was 5,100 accounts on a statewide basis. This represents further incremental growth in the weekly residential shopping rate compared to growth of 4,800 accounts a week ago, 4,000 accounts two weeks ago, and a historic low of under 3,000 accounts three weeks ago.

Still, Pennsylvania was a market seeing growth of 6,000 migrated customers per week in much of January, and aggregate growth levels of 7,000-10,000 migrated customers per week in November and October of last year.

Matters has previously examined the slowdown in migration in light of the PUC's minimal changes to the retail market structure as contained in its end-state retail market order (see prior story)

Specifically, the weekly net growth in residential shoppers at each utility from about February 21 to about February 27 was as follows:

Duquesne Light         522
Met-Ed                 867
PECO                 1,086
Penelec                892
Penn Power             157
PPL                  1,039
West Penn Power        533

For some utilities, this week's growth represents marginal improvement, but for others (Duquesne Light, West Penn Power), it represents a decline.