A case study from Maryland on electric restructuring.
Sheldon Switzer is the director, electric pricing and tariffs, for Baltimore Gas and Electric Company.
As Yogi Berra once said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it!” But some might have forgotten another piece of advice from the great Yankee catcher and slugger: “You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you are going, because you might not get there.”
Follow along with me, and these two quotes will give you a bit of a clue as to where we are and where we are going with electric utility restructuring in Maryland.
On the one hand, we now have customer choice in Maryland for retail electric supply. A new state law guaranteed that right for all commercial and industrial customers as of Jan. 1, 2001, and for residential customers in three stages — July 1, 2000, July 1, 2001, and July 1, 2002. For my company, Baltimore Gas and Electric (BGE), retail choice for all customers began on a single date — July 1, 2000 — according to the terms of a settlement agreement signed in 1999 by BGE and various other Maryland stakeholders, including government regulators, customer groups, and energy suppliers.