The way it works is this...

All the electric companies get together and agree to never charge BELOW a certain price so they can protect their profits.

Then they abandon any ideas of customer service or ethics. They'll put false charges on your bill or "misread" your meter. They'll nickle and dime you every chance they can get. Of course you can't complain about it or expect anyone to do anything about it because the answer you'll get is "it's electric CHOICE, so choose another provider." That's their solution instead of actually regulating the industry...of course EVERY company will be bad.

Then you'll see each state have a race to the bottom in environmental laws. If Pennsylvania won't allow you to generate electricity cheaply by burning used motor oil and anti-freeze, then Virginia WILL and so the electric companies there will charge you less and get all the customers. Then PPL will bribe some politician to "reform" Pennsylvania's environmental laws so they can compete.

Prices will go up every year. Speculators will come in and really cause the price of electricity to rise. People won't be able to pay their bills so the electric company will shut off people's power.

Finally, you'll see the electric companies buying each other out until there is only one or two left...then they'll fail because they used all their capital to buy each other out and didn't keep their power plants kept up.

And then the taxpayers will get to bail out these companies who reaped all the benefits of the free-market yet faced none of the risks.

And after all that what will the solution be? Token-symbolic legislation that the powers that be will pretend has actual value, but really just rebuilds the unregulated private for profit system we had in the first place.

Bet on it.

I love the banner ad at the side. It says "end energy confusion" then it list 3 different plans but the only dollar amounts they give you is the early cancellation fee which is $100-300. Then I hit the next button and I get a 404 error page. It is like sitting in an expensive restaurant and looking at a menu without the prices. What ever you order you already know your credit card is not going to like it.

So far the chart comparing rates from LNP was the most helpful i have seen anywhere. But with new companies coming on board all the time and conditions changing all the time this is not a once and done time to research. Most of these companies only freeze the rate for 1 year. So is this like the intro rate you can get from comcast, then it jumps to the normal rate?

From what I've seen, most of these offers are for one year contracts. You don't have to renew if the price goes up at the end of it. More companies will be coming in with offers, but you have to sign up before a certain date. I think Jan. 7 was one of them.

Does anyone know if this affects Met-Ed customers? I've heard Met-Ed is 2011, which gives me another year to procrastinate.
BTW, I think the three-month teaser rates are awful, even if I understand why the companies are fishing for suckers with those rates. (it works)

You've never met my family. I'm constantly telling them to turn stuff off, $200/month might be a deal.
I expect you to sign a contract that I'll never pay more than $1200/6 mo. AND my power will remain on at all times.
I expect to be pro-rated for any outages.
I like the way this guy thinks some times.
BTW, waste oil burned is better than waste oil in the refuse stream.
Anti-freeze to my knowledge does not burn. The small amount of methanol in it which is combustible would take much more energy to recover than you'd get out of it. Assuming it's not the pet-friendly kind that doesn't have methanol to begin with.