Competitive Era Fails to Shrink Electric Bills

By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON

Published: October 15, 2006

A decade after competition was introduced in their industries, long-distance phone rates had fallen by half, air fares by more than a fourth and trucking rates by a fourth. But a decade after the federal government opened the business of generating electricity to competition, the market has produced no such decline.

Instead, more rate increase requests are pending now than ever before, said Jim Owen, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, the association for the investor-owned utilities that provide about 60 percent of the nation’s power. The investor-owned electric utility industry published a June report entitled “Why Are Electricity Prices Increasing?”