Baseline: Heading Into June Rate Increases, Six of Seven Pennsylvania Utilities Still Seeing Loss of Residential Shoppers

Entering June, during which residential customers at most of the seven major Pennsylvania electric utilities will see significant spikes in their default service rates, most utilities are still seeing a decline in the number of residential customers on competitive supply.

Due to the late May announcement of final June 1 Prices to Compare at most utilities, and the extended up-to 45-day switching period, customer migration back to competitive supply may not start to appear in the PA Power Switch stats until late June or early July.

Accordingly, the recent June 4 stats from the PUC should serve as a baseline, and help determine if customers will give electric choice another chance due to higher default service rates, or if the rate hikes are not enough to persuade customers dissatisfied with choice due to winter polar vortex pricing to again try leaving their default supplier.

Thus far, there's been no significant change in the continuing trend of declining residential shopping at most of the utilities.

From about May 29 to June 4 (reporting date varies slightly by utility) the weekly change in the number of residential customers on competitive supply was:

Duquesne Light         (907)
Met-Ed                 (266)
PECO                   (501)
Penelec                (387)
Penn Power               20
PPL                    (433)
West Penn Power        (447)

The changes are about the same as they had been for the prior two weeks in late May, with two notable changes.

First, while PPL is still losing a significant amount of residential shoppers, for most of May the weekly loss was in excess of 1,000 customers, versus 433 in the past week. The slowdown could be for several reasons, including a holiday break in meter reading, aside from a potential uptake in switching away from default service, so we are not ready to attribute this to increasing migration to competitive supply.

Second, Penn Power, according to the PA Power Switch stats, has recorded three straight weeks of not losing residential customers on competitive supply, though the weekly growth of 20 was the highest growth during this span.