2 weeks, 1 day ago by Scott Hardy
Customers often pay more than rate offered by Ameren
A consumer group that watches over utility prices in Illinois says that Ameren Illinois customers have lost millions of dollars over the past year due to using alternative electricity suppliers.
The Citizens Utility Board said Tuesday that customers of both Ameren and Commonwealth Edison who use alternative electricity suppliers have lost a combined total of about $297 million over the last year and $1.8 billion since 2015. That includes over $122 million lost by Ameren customers last year. CUB issued a statewide warning, urging Illinois consumers to beware of rip-offs peddled by alternative suppliers door-to-door, via mail and over the phone. The loss figures come from annual state reports by the Illinois Commerce Commission on electricity competition. The ICC says that from last June to May 31st, Ameren Illinois customers who were with an alternative supplier on average paid about 2.4 cents per kilowatt hour more, compared with Ameren’s supply rate. They also say that last June, the ICC found a variable rate of 39.5 cents per kilowatt hour in Ameren territory. That's about five times the utility supply price at the time.
CUB says that in the first few years of choosing alternative suppliers, people saved money with other suppliers because utilities were locked into more expensive electricity contracts. Once those contracts ended, competing suppliers had more difficulty beating the utility’s supply rate. Since then, the results have been dismal for consumers. CUB says that if you’re on a municipal aggregation community power deal, like the one offered by the city of Quincy, confirm the price, how it compares with the utility’s supply rate, and for how long the contract is.
