Announcements

We Need Your Voice, Your Words, Your Support for Fair Electric Rates!
01.26.09

The Campaign for Fair Electric Rates is a grassroots effort focused on telling customers why electric rates have been artificially inflated and asking them to get involved by simply writing a comment or signing a letter. MG&E wants customers to know about the failure of wholesale electricity markets run by organizations like the ISO-New England and we want to do something about it.

• Electric rates in Massachusetts are on average 56% higher than in states not yet deregulated. Rates have increased at a much faster pace than increases in fuel costs - before this year, that rate was threefold.
• The system for determining the price of power each day through the ISO is set by the highest cost bid, not the lowest. Even that high profit hasn't been enough to encourage new plants or transmission improvements so prices will stay high.
• The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has been allowing these market practices to try to promote competition but the only results so far has been hurting the consumer. Like Wall Street and the mortgage crisis, the convoluted practices in the wholesale electric market defy reason or explanation and stay under wraps. FERC now needs to take a closer look and end unfair charges.

We are asking for your voice, your words, and your support to bring fairness back for wholesale electric rates. Take a few minutes to print a letter or fill in a comment card, then sign and return it to us. We'll take your letters and comment cards to Washington D.C. and deliver them to our Representatives in a new administration.

Click on Just the Facts below for basic facts about this issue.

Click on Learn More/Take Action below read more about how this all happened, including how electric rates in this state compare to others, and a business manager's perspective. Then choose to print a pre-written letter to sign and send back or draft your own.

Please help us tell Congress to change the way ISO-New England does business. Let's stop unfair practices that drive up electric costs now. We can't wait for something in the business of electricity to stop working.