A year after it began offering lower-than-average electricity rates to residents and small businesses, Auburn-based Electricity Maine‘s customer base has swelled from several hundred people to 150,000, and the company is credited with telling Mainers about their electricity rights when few others have bothered.
“It’s just huge — hugely successful,” said Electricity Maine co-owner Kevin Dean. “We had planned on, in a couple of years, thinking we’d reach 50,000 people.”
As a competitive energy provider, known as a CEP, Electricity Maine supplies electricity to Mainers who sign up for their service. All Mainers have had the right to choose their power supplier since 2000, when state law restructured the electric utility industry and prohibited major utilities such as Central Maine Power and Bangor Hydro from both supplying and delivering electricity. Those utilities would delivery power, but someone else — a CEP — would supply it.
Everything stayed on one bill and there was no interruption of power, making the transition so seamless that few families and small businesses noticed the change. Although they suddenly had the power to choose their supplier, few small consumers did. Instead, nearly all went with the “standard offer,” a rate bid by suppliers, accepted by the Maine Public Utilities Commission on Mainers’ behalf and requiring no action by consumers.
Although CEPs did business in Maine, most served only large accounts. They could make more money with one or two large businesses than with hundreds of small consumers, so few CEPs wanted to spend the time or money to educate residents and advertise.
In spring 2011, 11 years after the electric industry was restructured, 0.5 percent of CMP’s residential customers got their electricity from CEPs, while about 84 percent of CMP’s large customers did.
Then, last summer, Electricity Maine opened for business.
Open for business
Dean and business partner Emile Clavet owned more than 20 businesses and used CEPs to power them for years. They got great deals on the electricity that ran their offices, but they had trouble finding a similarly great deal to power their houses. So the pair, along with then-business partners Kirk Nadeau and Peter Whitney, created Electricity Maine and devoted it to residential and small-business consumers.
They believed they had a way around the challenge and cost of marketing to hundreds of thousands of residential customers: social media.
They were right, partially. Electricity Maine’s first customers heard about it through Facebook, friends of friends, workplace discussions and fliers. But soon after, Electricity Maine started to advertise. It now regularly runs ads.
“We’ve been using the TV (ads) to get them off the couch and get them to the site, and then using social media to spread the word to their friends,” Dean said.
The combination worked. So did the company’s prices. Electricity Maine vowed to always offer a per-kilowatt supply price that was lower than the standard offer. For a few months in 2012 — after Electricity Maine lowered its price for the year but before the new standard offer kicked in for CMP’s residential customers — Electricity Maine’s price was about 17 percent lower.
At that point, Electricity Maine was signing up 2,000 to 3,000 customers per day.
Its price is now about 5 percent lower for small CMP customers and about 1.5 percent lower for Bangor Hydro customers.
The ease of switching helped draw customers, too. Although sign-up requirements and fees vary by CEP, Electricity Maine designed its sign-up to be quick and easy, requiring only basic contact information and the customer’s CMP or Bangor Hydro account number. The company charged no sign-up fee, though its terms of service note a $100 charge to customers who leave before their one-year contract is up.
And as with all CEPs, Electricity Maine customers see no change in their electricity service. CMP and Bangor Hydro remain responsible for delivery and service, which means power outages, billing and line maintenance are their responsibility. Customers who sign up with a CEP still get one bill from their utility. If the power goes out because of a storm, customers still call their utility.
The percentage of CMP’s small customers who used a CEP skyrocketed from 0.5 percent a little over a year ago to about 23 percent now. Experts say most of those have gone to Electricity Maine.
Customer rates in mind
Maine Public Advocate Dick Davies credits the company for being the first to make a serious effort to tell consumers about their electricity options.
“They’ve done quite a good job,” he said. “We like seeing that happen because we want customers to have as many choices as possible, and this one has offered them, at least for the time being, a way of saving some money even over the standard offer, which is a pretty good price, relatively speaking.”
He does caution, though, that Electricity Maine could struggle to maintain its low rates in the future. Although standard-offer rates change once a year, they are typically based on a supplier’s three-year purchase of electricity. Electricity Maine’s rates also change once a year but they are based on electricity purchases made more in real time, Davies said. That means when electricity prices go down — as they have in recent years — Electricity Maine is better able to buy low and pass that savings on to consumers. But when prices go up — as they do during improving economies — the advantage goes to the standard offer because it was based on older, lower costs.
Electricity Maine guarantees its prices for a year.
“We’re telling people, ‘We buy your power for a year and it’s a one-year contract and it won’t change,’” Dean said. “We found people want to know it’s not going to change during that year.”
If Electricity Maine’s prices go up, or a customer isn’t happy with them for another reason, that customer can return to the standard offer by calling Electricity Maine and telling the company to switch the account back to the standard offer, though a fee may apply for customers who leave before their one-year contract expires. Customers who stay are automatically enrolled for another year.
If a CEP goes out of business, customers are switched back to the standard offer automatically.
Dean maintains Electricity Maine will always offer the lowest price.
“I don’t see anything that leads me to believe I won’t be able to,” he said.
At the moment, Electricity Maine has little competition. A year ago, 22 CEPs were licensed to sell to CMP’s residential customers. That number has jumped to 34, but experts say few, if any, are actively pursuing customers.
Electricity Maine is now signing up 2,000 to 3,000 new customers a week. It got a bump recently when CMP raised its delivery rates. Although supply and delivery are separate and Electricity Maine has no control over delivery rates, Dean believes a rash of customers signed up in an effort to offset their higher delivery charge with a lower supply charge.
The company that started with two employees now has more than a dozen and is looking to hire more, including call center and marketing workers.
It is also expanding outside Maine.
About six weeks ago, Dean and Clavet started Energy New Hampshire, a CEP for that state. They have about 10,000 customers.
“The growth has been faster than the initial Maine stuff,” said Dean, who believes that’s because he and his business partner know better how and where to advertise than they did when they started Electricity Maine.
“We were kind of newbies,” he said.
Boogie_Bangor doesn’t boogie so well when I open my power bill each month. I have used Bangor Hydro since Moses was born. The rates are pathetically high. Can some of you Bangor based customers who have used Electricity Maine advise me?
I switched a year ago and my cost has gone down. I have kept track of my K-watts used monthly for seven years on my computer and the only difference each month is the lower cost from Electricity of Maine. I probably save five to seven dollars per month. I use allot of K-watts per month because of a swimming pool and AC, and a lighted American flag.
steroixvid: “I use allot of K-watts per month because of a swimming pool and AC, and a lighted American flag.” Hence the reason you are the #1 part of the problem and so not part of the solution!
Why do youy consider me part of the problem. I pay for what Iuse.What is the solution?
I switched this month to a solar light for my flag and switched my heating system to propane, I had them put in piping for natural gas when ever it comes to my part of Bangor.
Approximately how much did it go down if you have Bangor Hydro. Could not be much its only like a dollar for every Hundred dollar bill
I think you was asking if I stayed with the standard electriticy it would be about five to seven more per month. The Bangor Hydro cost is the same because they deliver the energy only.
I just went back to check my old Hydro bill.
A 31 day bill July 2011 I paid $8.04 per day
A 31 day bill July 2012, I paid $7.81 per day while using 37.2 K-Watt more in 2012.
From what i have been told that every hundred dollars ,you will save about a dollar with Bangor Hydro. I have yet to see it in my bill the deduction but i do not know i get three bills a month for different areas, so its kind of hard to figure it out
I
think you was asking if I stayed with the standard electriticy it would
be about five to seven more per month. The Bangor Hydro cost is the
same because they deliver the energy only.
I just went back to check my old Hydro bill.
A 31 day bill July 2011 I paid $8.04 per day
A 31 day bill July 2012, I paid $7.81 per day while using 37.2 K-Watt more in 2012.
Great product but a bit shocking.
The difference between the standard offer and Electricity Maine’s rates is better in my pocket than in the standard offer’s(Constellation Energy’s) pocket. Too bad it so long(10 years) for real competition to develop.
When I look at the Constellation website, it looks like they no longer serve residential customers in Maine.
Do all you can to run from Constellation ! They took the MD/VA/DC power grid from running to barely life support in less than 5 years. And they had the nerve to try and raise rates at the same time. MD’s PUC stopped that crap dead in it’s track’s.
Yakdude: Love your energy. Love your effort. Love that you do your due dilligence. Keep it going. We need far more hard core environmenttal activists just like you!
Due diligence? Yes. Hard core environmental activist? Not really. Its just that reading this article after hearing tons of ads on the radio finally compelled me to follow up on the company. When in trying to do my research I can’t find answers that should be simple to find, especially in a heavily regulated industry, I get wound up. When I see big headlines that amount to a free advertisement for a product that isn’t all that great, but will encourage the sheeple to buy it because it has ‘neat’ packaging and it sounds cool, then I call people out on it so others won’t get suckered into buying something that on the surface sounds great, but isn’t.
We saved some much using them…..terrific program!
Once upon a time the PUC had their own website so you could examine the rates of all available suppliers. Unfortunately, that ‘easy-to-access’ information has disappeared from the web (a casualty of our current administration?) If anyone knows where this information is located now, please post it. I just spent 1/2 hour looking and to no avail.
Since rates are changing so much, you will have to call up each individual CEP to get their respective rates. A CEP list is still availble on the PUC website under Electric – Electric Supply Choices.
The problem with that list is that there if you click on CMP Residential there are 8 pages of Retail Electricity Suppliers listed. Of the 32 companies listed for CMP, most are aggregators, not suppliers. Of the suppliers listed, 2 don’t do business in Maine, one doesn’t offer individual residential supply, one is evidently out of business (website is defunct). A lot of work to find out that we really only have 6 choices available… 3 with fixed rates, 3 with variable. See my other post for the results. My point was that there is no easy way to get there from here.
http://www.maine.gov/mpuc/electricity/standard_offer_rates/index.html
that just shows Standard Offer rates, not optional suppliers.
http://www.maine.gov/tools/whatsnew/attach.php?id=66311&an=1
yeah, great. Each citizen that wants to see what there is for options has to call all 39 pages of these carriers, only to find out that half of them aren’t even legit any more. Why can’t ONE person on the PUC staff keep tabs on this and update it once a quarter instead of each citizen having to do the work (or throw their hands up) individually?
Wish I could help. And I’m sure the LePage administration had somehting to do with that! They only care about energy prices, NOW. All other concerns to them are non-existent!
It’s packed away with the murals from the labor department.
Your Bangor Hydro bill is two parts… the delivery charge, which will STILL be Bangor Hydro no matter who supplies the power. And the supplier charge, which could be the Standard offer supplier, or ElectricityME, or any of the 6 supplier options we have for residential power in Maine. Compare the ElectricityME cost to the supplier that you have now and you’ll have your answer.
Caveat Emptor (let the buyer beware). Before you try to save a buck or two you should know that the latest ElectricityME Fact Sheet (a/k/a Uniform Disclosure Label) shows CO2, NOx, and SO2 emissions to be equal to the New England average. So you may think… so what? However, NextEra Energy, the Standard Offer Service supplier for Central Maine Power has CO2 emissions 33% lower, NOx emissions 48.7% lower, SO2 emissions 47.7% lower. That trade off, to me, is not worth the less than 5% savings in the supply side of my electric bill. It’s not just all about the money… it’s about our environment. Be Informed!
Most correct, yakdude! Personally, I would rather pay a few dollars more each month for a much greener mix of sources, such as local hydro, wind, and tidal. Renewable, burning no fossil fuels from distant hostile countries. No blood for oil (or gas!) http://www.maine.gov/mpuc/greenpower/faq.shtml
And domestic coal simply means the wholesale removal of mountaintops, just in other states–take that, West Virginia– and the with prevailing winds, we get the pollution here in the Northeast. Nukes are just sucker bets–push the problem down the line and hope for no earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, terrorism or accidents…
What is $5 or so extra a month to breathe cleaner? A smart investment in our future, if we have one. Anything else is penny wise and pound foolish.
I see the George Soros army of bloggers has been dispatched to comment on this article.
Go with the lower price. The rest is nonsense.
I have nothing to do with Soros, I just like the environment to be healthy. Post an address so we can send all the smog, acid rain, and hot air to your house.
If you really want to belong to a group, Im sure there are some who go after the real villians, fly to China and save the world from over there.
Not so.
You get what you pay for, whether it be in monetary terms or secondary issues; pollution, smog, carcinogens, more chemicals entering your body through your lungs, skin, etc. Have a happy not-so-long, and sounds like not-so-healthy life. Jump on the bandwagon of cheap prices, but be prepared to pay down the road.
No, to save 5 cents on the dollar, you are adding to all the costs of pollution in terms of everything from increased health costs, forest degradation to towns having to build higher seawalls.
This is a just another corporatist scheme that makes someone money but that actually produces nothing good.
It is to the environment just like taking even more equality out of your house by refinancing , again, with a adjustable mortgage tied to the LIBOR rate. What could go wrong with that , remember ?
Only in this case the environment going underwater is quite literal.
Well I don’t want left wingers imposing things that are not reasonable and unaffordable. I live in an area that used to be known for some of the cheapest rates in Maine but now we have to pay CMP rates, and we can’t look into other providers because of the deals they cut. The only ones who have profit from the green energy scam here in Maine is Angus King, Kurt Adams , Rep. Hinck and his wife lobbyist Juliet Browne, The Baldacci’s , Former House Speaker John Richardson and that creepy Dennis Bailey.
Amen I agree the green energy scam that Liberals here in Maine want to impose on us is a waste of money. It hasn’t done anything to lower energy costs. They have raised costs to the point folks light bills are 3 to 4 times higher than other states energy costs and they also have better business climates than here in Maine. I am for more energy sources. But since we took out our hydro dams, got rid of Maine Yankee we have been paying for it ever since. Natural Gas, Nuclear, Clean Coal, Biomass Hydro should be part of the solution as well. Until Liberals and Enviros meet us half way we should not cave in anymore.
It’s not even $5. For CMP w/ Standard Offer its only ~3% off ~50% of your bill. My monthly CMP bill is ~$60 (~$80 during A/C season). So that would be but only a $1 less for me. And yet for that one dollar I would have to make a pact with the very devils themself; Big Oil, Big Coal, Big Fossil and Big Nuclear! Not me folks! Not now! Not ever!
Well expect the economy in Maine never to ever get better because the Green Energy requirements that Liberals in the Legislature and Enviros in Maine think we can pay for is not affordable. In most cases we have seen these Wind Turbines be a joke. They haven’t reached any of the targets that their supporters claim to occur if they are put in. Now they want to destroy our ocean and fishing lands with these offshore turbines installed under water and the huge wind turbines UMAINE is testing. For the loss of jobs this will occur they should reimburse these folks. Because Mainers shouldn’t have to give up jobs so the Liberal 1%ers making a mint off this scam be enriched even more.
I was thinking the same thing. Why would I bother to switch for such a meager savings. 5% is a drop in the bucket. Now if I was operating a large business and paying thousands a month for electricity it might make sense but as a residential customer I don’t see that saving a few dollars a month is worth the environmental impact.
Most incorrect, Smarten_Up! Less than 1% of New England’s electricity is generated from oil. Not sure how your spinning that into “no fossil fuels from distant hostile countries.”
AND, only about 11% of New England’s electricity is generated from coal – mostly not from states that practice mountaintop removal mining. Not sure what you’re actually accomplishing on the mountaintop removal front since it has little to do with New England electricity.
AND, I’m not sure what electricity generation in New England has to do with prevailing winds blowing pollution in from other areas that DO burn more coal. How are you changing the fuel mix in the midwest, or elsewhere, by paying a few bucks extra for your New England generated electricity?
Maybe you could clarify.
The worst part of the trade off is, that for a savings that averages about $2-$3 per user per month (~3% off only~50% of your bill), this will cost us all billions when the effects of our environmental irresponsibility come back to roost. Just look at this year’s drought and what that alone is going to cost us all in higher prices for absolutley everything. And that is going to hit our pocketbooks way more deeply than an extra $2-$3 a month from this alternative can replenish. So to anyone who says that the economics of spending more now for green energy just don’t add up, You are just so wrong!
Do you think there is a “Green Grid” that CMP and Bangor Hydro are buying their power from and a nasty old poluting grid that Electricty Maine is buying from? Same same grid……. ISO New England.
The state PUC website is woefully inadequate in chasing down my answers. After spending a good chunk of the last hour or two, I found that there are 6 residential energy suppliers currently in the state of Maine. 3 of them have rates that vary from month to month (I’m not interested in variable) and 3 have fixed rates… NextEra (the standard offer supplier for CMP customers), Maine Green Power (which is 1.5 cents higher than the standard offer), and Electricity Maine (which is 0.36 cents cheaper).
Not a bit surprised that you had a hard time getting info. re. CMP from the PUC site. If you look at who’s at the helm, most of the commissoners are former attorneys from the Pierce Atwood law firm, which represents…CMP. Interesting how many got on board after Lepage was elected. And this is an agency which is charged with fairly representing both consumers and businesses. Ha! Just one more in a long list of slime within this (mis)administration.
mainegal17: Excellent point! The fox’s representation guarding the hen house. And then LePage making that reality even worse! When we we ever learn???
Yakdude: I went down the same rabbit hole you have when E-Maine first started their TV ad campaign. The worst part is that its so hard to get electricity supply data sheets from all suppliers that are for the exacxt same time period, or even year. And some, instead of reporting current or past period mix/use, report future projected mix/use. The PUC really needs to force some standardization of the data sheets, so that real, same period, actual supplier mix, side-by-side comparisons can be made.
What about northern Maine? We could use with some choice up here.
It’s all Kylie Bennet, she could sell ice to Eskimos (Eskimo men anyway!)
Who is ‘Standard offer’ ?
It’s not a Who, it’s a What. The Standard Offer Pricing for Bangor Hydro customers is offered by a combination of Integrysenergy and New Brunswick Power Generation through 2012, then 100& New Brunswick Power after 1/1/13). The Standard Offer supplier is NextEra Energy for CMP customers.
The who is: The one supplier who earns a contract from the PUC (through a process of competitive biffing) to have the right to be the default electrical supplier, esp. when a consumer opts to pick no other. And for us consumers, it is not opt in but opt out. So do nada, and you get The Standard Offer as your supplier (the one Yakdude tells you more about below).
Coal is cheap.
Maine could use some coal fired plants. electric rates would be cut in half tomorrow. competition is great.. Merc and Perk would be a good start then the paper mills it is unlimited what we could do with coal. it could revive the rail service in Maine. A win win
Be careful for what you ask. Coal is artificially cheap and has a lot of down side. Plus, you have to get it here. No chance in Hades of getting coal fired plants in Maine, for good reasons.
how many times do we have to remind people that wind is not green or environmentally sound?
google wind watch..see the movie Windfall;..google Maine Wind Task Force or if on Facebook see Maine Wind Concerns. thank you….I would not sign up voluntarily for any electricity that comes from wind and have been approached and said NO>
Yoga, people seem to have to believe in something even if it is a lie. Lying is the standard for politicans and businessmen/women today. and people are never held accountable for their lies. Go Figure
according to the puc website the standard offer rate for residential customers is .071389 and per Electricity Maine’s site their offer is .0707 that is just a fraction of a penny per KWH…. not enough for me to bother changing. Beware as they do charge a fee if you change your mind……you would have to use a lot of KWH to save even a dollar….. just my opinion…..
But its so simple to change… in these times a penny is a penny. I changed over months ago.. Simply have to fill out an online form.. Takes 5 minutes
Don’t worry a foreign corporation is setting its sites on buying this local company out. Probably another Canadian Electric Company. Can’t have Mainers own their own electric company and set their own rates. LeStooge is calling all over Canada right now to find a Oligarch Buddy to buy and shut these Mainers down NOW.
If the Lame Stream Media is so left-wing liberal and in bed with Democrats, Socialists, Environmentalists and Anarachists, then why does every bit of reporting on this company never ever even touch the issue of their very anti-green, anti-renewable energy mix that is instead very pro-nuclear, pro-coal, pro-oil, pro-fossil and only gets around the Exisiting Maine Renewable Energy Minimum Mix Requirement through the use of loop-holes like fossil fuel co-generation and cooling system lost energy re-capture? Riddle me that Ye who always say the media is left biased???
The big news not yet reported on here is that last month, CMP hiked its transmission rates by 19.6% for every single one of its customers to fund the new transmission that is being built solely to accommodate the useless wind “farms” that the scamming carpetbaggers aim to build on almost every ridgeline in Maine.
See:
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/maine-electricity-rates-going-up
To all: The absolute best way to lower you electricity bill: Use less!
NOPE! Use as much as you want and shop around for the best price.