New York began when the state government began to implement policies to restructure the electricity industry. It was believed that this deregulation could help businesses and consumers save money on electricity in the State of New York in light of a flagging economy and increasing power costs at the hands of the monopolies granted to electrical utilities when power regulations were first enacted.While deregulation is something that has been occurring within the natural gas industry since the seventies, deregulation in New York is something that took quite a while. The reason for this is that it’s a lot more complicated than natural gas. Because of these complications, the restructuring would impact the cost of electricity greatly, as well as the way things work in the power industry in the years to come. In the end , the government determined that deregulation would immensely help the public, and would keep the utility companies from hiking up their prices. The solution that the government came up with was to allow smaller companies to operate on the power grid, and charge different prices. This did of course mean that people would be forced to pay the rates that that company, especially if they wanted power to their houses and call for national grid phone number albany ny
Despite the safeguards set up at the state level that were supposed to be in place in the form of the state Public Service Commission, up until recently the consumer has had very little to say about the prices and rates charged by the utilities. The PSC was perceived as acting rarely in the interest of the individual consumer, and the consumer had very little recourse open since they had no other choice except to go with the one utility that was operating in their area.Deregulation in New York was designed to allow the consumer to choose a power company which has a more competitive rate charged for Kilowatt hours (KWh). This offers a potential savings to the individual energy consumer because outside concerns can charge rates less than those set by the original territorial power provider.
This also helps theoretically because a consumer is free to choose an electricity provider which produces electricity utilizing a more environmentally friendly renewable generation source like solar or wind compared to the burning of coal which accounts for over a third of all electrical power generated. New York is one of only 19 states which is implementing restructuring to a competitive market. No matter what happens, there’s always going to be a serious problem with the idea of deregulation. The major power company still has to provide the services for the area, and they still have to repair and maintain the power grid. Customers will have to pay a deliver charge on that account because the company does need to do the repairs. Though you might appear to be getting a lower price the deliver charge might actually overpower this.