Pay now or pay more later - no real savings for Delaware Electricity customers

The many great (sarcasm intended) plans to help Delaware customers of Delmarva Power deal with the 59% rate hike coming on May 1st have boiled down to deferring payment for three years. The trick is that you will pay interest on the deferred amount of the payment! It's the American Dream, enjoy now, pay later. It seems to me that Delmarva Power gets paid no matter what, and they get to charge some interest as well. They claim to only be charging the interest to cover their own loan costs to provide the phase-in program. If you are a customer you are automatically added to the phase-in plan.

What should you do? Decide whether you want to defer and pay interest, or if you have the ability to pay the increase, opt out of the phase-in plan by calling 1-877-285-9316 or going to www.delmarva.com. The amount deferred is about $415, and you will pay $30 in interest on that, the handy chart above explains the phase-in. Maryland customers will not have to pay interest on the phase-in plan. They must have better negotiators.

Just to fuel the fire further, which would be nice, given the price of oil and gas these days, Delmarva and other public utilities overcharge their customers to pay income taxes that they never actually pay to the state and federal government. Once again, our crack team of duly elected representatives are on the case. Turns out this practice has been going on for decades.

To sum up: Deregulating electricity in Delaware has produced no competition and yielded a 59% electricity rate increase. "Softening" the increase amounts to putting off payment and getting charged interest to do so, which actually increases the increase. The politicians that allowed deregulation to occur are not in office anymore, and the ones who regulated it in the first place are even further gone. Finally we are overcharged on our bills to pay Delmarva income taxes. If only I didn't need all of that pesky electricity, I wouldn't have anything to do with these people!

tags: peakoil, electricity, Delaware, deregulation