Pennsylvania

According to the 1996 laws passed in Pennsylvania, every consumer in the state has the right to chose who provides electric service as part of their utility bill.  This came about because before this point the cost for electric and gas was 15% higher there then other places in the country. The change in laws phased in to make the entire state of Pennsylvania a deregulated state for electricity and gas.

The fine print, often overlooked, is that this only applies to those utility companies regulated by PUC or the Pennsylvania Utility Commission. Public for profit companies must allow individuals the right to select a supplier to send electricity or gas to them through them. This means that while not every area has more than one supplier interested in providing energy through the specific utility company that services the area, every person, or nearly so, in the state has the right to make a switch when one is offered.

PUC utility companies serve a large majority of the population but they do not cover all of the people living in the state. The fact is that since the late 1930's there have been Rural electric cooperatives form across the nation that typically provide energy non-profit. Both these and utilities that cities, boroughs, and townships own and operate do not fall under PUC. Because of this the Pennsylvania Utility Commission cannot regulate prices, policy, or services that these utilities offer. In short- the state cannot mandate that these types of utility companies become deregulated. For the small percentage of the population that lives in the rural areas serviced by these cooperatives the 1996 deregulation laws simply do not apply.

In Pennsylvania there are nearly six hundred thousand rural residents who are part of Electric Cooperatives. These utilities are not regulated by PUC.  Instead they are handled by the Pennsylvania Rural Electric Association or PREA. There are thirteen non-profit electric cooperatives in Pennsylvania (and one in New Jersey) that maintain twelve and a half percent of the transmission lines in the state. These Cooperatives cover about a third of the land, and are member owned 

One must remember that six hundred thousand is but a small number when compared to the overall population of the state, however.  This figure for the 2010 was over twelve million, seven hundred and two thousand (12,702,379 to be exact). The percentage then is four point seven, meaning that ninety five point three percent of the state, population wise,  is serviced by one of the eleven PUC utility companies.

So PUC handles 95.3% of the population, 87.5% of the transmission lines, and roughly 66% of the land size in the state. This is not bunched up however.  The PREA co-ops cover a band across the state along a line from Cambridge Springs to Gettysburg that bisects it diagonally with a secondary cluster centered on Mansfield, Wysox, and Forksville along the northeast border. The other cooperatives in the state include the communities of Bedford, Parker, New Enterprise, Indiana, Somerset, DuBois, Huntingdon, and Youngsville.  The counties that these thirteen Cooperatives serve are typically low population. This leaves the other eleven utility companies to handle the majority of customers and about two-thirds of the land in the state.

Aside from these typically rural and low population density counties, the companies regulated by PUC cover the major cities and communities that are not in a Co-op.  These PUC governed utilities are: Allegheny Power, Citizens' Electric, Duquesne, Met-Ed, PECO, Penelec, Penn Power, Pike County, PPL, UGI, and Wellsboro Electric. Cooperatives and utilities that are owned by a city, borough, or township do not fall under PUC and are one of the 13 handled by PREA.

It is the two-thirds of the most populated areas of the state that are covered by PUC. Even though all the PUC Utility Companies offer the ability to shop around, not everyone actually has competitive suppliers. Citizens' Electric, for example has no competitive suppliers in their coverage area, while Duquesne had suppliers for one of the three types if billing services they offer.  This means that even though 95.3% of the state's population has the right to make a choice, far fewer actually can choose because they are with a utility company with no suppliers vying for them for customers.

Pennsylvania likes to stay that “everyone” in the state has a choice on who provides them with energy.  What they don't say is that this only applies to the 95.3% who are under the Pennsylvania Utility Commission control.