Electric Blues

Joan Gayle, a 40-year-old mother of two, has a new hobby. Mornings, she sits at her kitchen table in her walk-up apartment on White Plains Road and ponders over the complexities of her electric bill.
Gayle's perplexed by the list of electric companies now competing to switch on her lights and keep her refrigerator cold. There's old Consolidated Edison, or Con Ed, the power company she's known for a while. Then, there are 31 newcomers, power providers Gayle has never heard of, all of which want to sign her up as a customer. And, to make matters worse, by now Gayle, like many other Bronxites, has heard her share of stories of just how jumbled things have become.
There's Larna Stein, 56, for instance. Stein, who resides in Westchester Square, was all too happy to switch electricity providers. She signed on with a company called NED East LLC of Boston, Massachusetts, and Con Ed took $50 off her monthly bill. "That was great, until the very next month, when I got two bills, one from Con Ed for service delivery and another from NED East," says Stein. "I compared the sum of the two bills with my old one and to my dismay I was only saving $1.10 to $1.50 monthly. It wasn't worth the trouble of writing two checks and using up two stamps (66 cents)."
Stein called NED and asked to be switched back. Instead, she found out that she was locked in for eight months. Otherwise, to switch back to Con Ed, she'd have to pay a $50 penalty. Stein says she's happy with NED's service, but she can't wait to go back to receiving one bill because in the long run it is cheaper.                 
Then consider Joycelyn Campbell, 39, a mother of five who lives in Bronxwood. When representatives of a company called Total Gas and Electric came canvassing her neighborhood for customers in January of this year, Campbell was interested. She was sold the minute she heard that she could save on the whopping $500 she paid out monthly to Con Ed. She signed on, but didn't receive a bill until May, a full four months later. Needless to say, Campbell owed a large sum, so much, she had to pay her bill in installments. "I'm sure I'm saving, but I'll have a better idea once I get this first bill behind me," she laments.
New laws have left Gayle, Stein, Campbell, and a lot of Bronxites puzzling over their power. In the not so distant past, there was just one company, offering one service. The local utility, Consolidated Edison (or just plain Con Ed) supplied and delivered electricity and gas to a customer base of 372,000 Bronx households and supplied thousands of others with gas. Prices were set according to state guidelines.
The confusion arose last year, when deregulation of both the electric and gas industries went into effect. For one, a host of new companies entered the power business, much to the confusion of New Yorkers. The list of them is full of new and unfamiliar names such as Columbia Energy Services, KeySpan Energy and 1st Rochdale Cooperative of New York City to name a few.
Also the gas and electricity services were divided into two parts. There are electric and gas generation companies, which bill customers each month for the power, heat, and gas they provide. In addition, there are a new class of delivery companies which transport the power or gas from the plant to homes and offices. In another important change, electricity and gas providers are in store for the same kind of price competition that is now standard practice in telecommunications, another service once provided by utilities.
What's resulted, however, is an odd set up. Customers get to choose one company to generate power and another to transport it over a grid of electrical wires to their home.
So, for Con Edison, the largest energy supplier in the nation with $7 billion in revenues, that meant that the practice of cornering the energy market in New York City and suburbs like Westchester for over a century was brought to a screeching halt. Or so it seems.
Con Ed, it turns out, isn't bowing out, but is reshaping itself in light of the changes. To cope with competition, the company has carve out four subsidiaries. One, Consolidated Edison Company of New York, will still supply customers with electricity, natural gas and steam services, and will still be regulated by New York state government. It will not only continue generating electrical power, gas and steam, but will also transport the three to your home or office. Another subsidiary, Consolidated Edison Solutions, meanwhile, will act as an energy consultant of sorts, informing customers about the changing energy marketplace and how new technologies could save money and reduce rates. Of the remaining two subsidiaries, one will work on infrastructure and the other will market wholesale power to other utilities. Jeffrey Katz, a spokesperson for Con Ed says, "Our new companies are able to provide more efficient service and cheaper rates (10% reduction over the next five years) while remaining competitive and maintaining the reliability expected of Con Ed.
"If that wasn't confusing enough, Con Ed has planned to introduce the competition in two phases. During the first which began in April 1998, customers were given "Shopping Credit" for 6 months, meaning they were given Con Edison's rates so that they could shop around for a less expensive one. Once a customer chose a new company his/her bill was lowered by $50, a one-time offer. In Phase two, customers who switched did not receive the discount. As mixed up as it all that seems, Con Ed has tried to help folks through the muddle. It has bombarded customers with information about the new rules. Included in each customer's bill is a pamphlet explaining the changes in the energy market and a list of Energy Supply Companies (ESCOs) who offer services.
According to figures released by Con Ed, since it enacted the first phase of its Retail Choice program last year only 60,000 (no figures yet for the Bronx) of its thousands of residential and commercial customers in New York City and Westchester have jumped at the chance to sign up with one of the 31 ESCO's that provide electricity, steam and natural gas. And, they expect another 100,000 to jump on the band wagon during the second phase which began in January of 1999. Con Ed hopes to complete the final phase of the Retail Choice Program by the end of 2001.So maybe Ms. Gayle, a school teacher is right to take her time making up her mind. Her complaint that, "I don't understand all the information they sent me. It is very confusing and complicated and I don't want my service interrupted so I am staying with the evil that I know," is the kind of caution that we should all be taking.