Broken: Two Pennsylvania Utilities Losing Residential Shopping Customers

Two electric distribution companies in Pennsylvania saw a decline in the number of residential electric customers on competitive supply during the most recent week, a new low point for the troubled market.

Specifically, Duquesne Light and West Penn Power saw the number of residential shoppers fall in the most recent week. Even as the Pennsylvania market has faced stalled migration, and backslides at individual utilities, on a weekly basis since the start of February, it is the first week that has seen two utilities see residential shopping fall in the same week.

West Penn Power is also now the third utility that has seen residential shopping decline during at least one week this year, joining Duquesne Light and previously PPL. PECO had also recorded a weekly loss in residential shopping during December.

The backslides come as the Pennsylvania PUC is scheduled to consider today action on its tentative order under which it proposed to shelve one of the few market enhancements it had previously adopted to combat the status quo bias in favor of default service which is driving the stalled migration; namely, the retail opt-in aggregations.

In the aggregate, Pennsylvania approached yet another historic low in terms of the weekly residential shopping growth.

From about March 28 to April 3 (reporting date varies slightly by utility), the state, in aggregate, saw growth in residential shopping of only 2,700 accounts, versus the still-weak growth of 4,400 accounts a week ago.

Specifically, the weekly net growth (loss) in residential shoppers at each utility from about March 28 to about April 3 was as follows:

Duquesne Light         (35)
Met-Ed               1,080
PECO                   634
Penelec                541
Penn Power             121
PPL                    463
West Penn Power        (76)

Link to PUC's 4/3/13 Weekly Migration Report

Matters has also developed a comparison of the migration levels from the 3/27/13 Report to the 4/3/13 Report.

Link to Matters' Comparison of Weekly Migration