The Daily Record

By Kathleen Johnston Jarboe
Daily Record Business Writer
 
A fourth company has offered to sell Maryland electricity to residents willing to shop for power.

Last week, Forest Hill-based OHMS Energy Co. LLC began telling potential customers that it could save them at least 10 percent on their energy bills.

OHMS representatives have begun advertising on radio and door-to-door, and were at a Towson festival last weekend.

A company executive said his firm was particularly targeting consumers buying electricity from Baltimore Gas & Electric Co. Rates at the Baltimore area utility are scheduled to jump 72 percent this summer for those who don’t take a rate curbing plan.  

“We really want to focus on the 1.2 million customers that, come July 1, may get stuck with the standard offer service,” said Sheirmiar White, president at OHMS.

White said his company guaranteed to save customers at least 10 percent off BGE rates. Savings could reach as high as 20 percent. But residents had to sign up by June 15 and pledge to buy power from the firm for one to two years. OHMS customers won’t know their exact savings until after the sign-up deadline.  

OHMS has already signed up 13,000 residential customers in Maryland and Delaware. In Maryland, most of the consumers choosing to buy electricity from OHMS have come from Howard County and Pepco’s service territory near Washington, according to White.
OHMS’s entry into the market marks the fourth supplier to offer alternatives to Maryland residents, who have traditionally just bought power from their local utility.

Other competitors include Washington Gas Energy Services, Pepco Energy Services Inc. and Commerce Energy Inc.

Earlier this year, Washington Gas Energy Services promised BGE customers it could save them 10 percent off the rates they would pay if they stuck with their traditional utility. The savings would apply to summer rates, according to its Web site. Other seasonal rates would be just 3 percent lower.

Pepco Energy sells green power alternatives to residents living in BGE and Pepco services territories.

A representative from Commerce Energy said it was too soon to detail what the California energy firm might offer.

“Currently we think it is going to be somewhere around 10 percent off. But it is hard to say at this point until we run all the numbers,” said spokesman Frank Wanderski.

Few outside electricity suppliers have ventured to sell electricity to the residential market. Suppliers claimed electricity price caps set in 1999 made power prices too low to compete with. Plus residential power users are among the least attractive of customers. They use little power compared to commercial organizations yet require costly billing and marketing efforts to sign.

But the expiration of price caps, coupled with skyrocketing energy prices, has changed Maryland’s electricity landscape.

“It creates some room for someone else to enter the marketplace,” said Jonathan M. Harvey, vice president at consulting firm WorldEnergy.

White, of OHMS, said his firm was targeting to add 200,000 residential customers but would perform well with just 100,000 signing up.