Mid-Atlantic Retail Supplier Drops Customers to Default Service, Extreme Pricing Dealt "Fatal" Blow

Clean Currents confirmed that it is dropping its electric customer base to default service, and has ceased accepting enrollments from new customers.

Clean Currents customers being returned to default service include customers in Maryland (BGE, Pepco), Pennsylvania (PECO, PPL), and D.C. (Pepco)

"The recent extreme weather, which sent the wholesale electricity market into uncharted territories, has fatally compromised our ability to continue to serve customers. We have informed PJM of this, and they have instructed the utilities where we serve to begin serving these customers immediately," Clean Currents told EnergyChoiceMatters.com

As of September 2013, Clean Currents had helped over 12,000 residential and 1,500 commercial customers across Maryland, the District of Columbia, and Pennsylvania switch to wind power

"While this unforeseen circumstance is extremely disappointing, we are proud of the efforts our employees and customers made to catalyze the switch to clean, renewable energy here in the Mid Atlantic. While the company may not be part of it, we hope the fight for a cleaner, greener future free of climate change continues," Clean Currents said.

The default is the latest example that, contrary to claims from certain integrated energy companies with retail books in Texas, wholesale markets with capacity markets do not reduce energy market volatility and do not appreciably diminish risks facing retail suppliers.

ISO New England, with its capacity market, has seen three defaults by retail suppliers in the past year, and now PJM is seeing a retail supplier exit the business due to extreme energy market pricing, despite the presence of a capacity market.