Those hot summer days can be brutal on your electricity bills. One way to fight the summer-bill-blues is to take advantage of your utility’s energy efficiency incentives. Case in point: ComEd’s Smart Ideas® Central Air Conditioning Cycling. ComEd will credit you $5 or $10 off your monthly electric bill between June…...
Breaking: ComEd power price to increase 38% June 1
ComEd’s residential energy rate is set to rise 38 percent from 5.52 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) to 7.596 cents per kWh on June 1. (See ways you can soften the rate hike below.) Crain’s Chicago Business reports that the average household bill will increase about 20 percent, to $82 per month because of…...
Rip-off response
Earlier this week, we issued tips to protect yourself from bad deals in the natural gas market. More than 1,800 of you responded to our accompanying survey, and about 56 percent of you said you had encountered a pitch from an alternative gas supplier. Here were some of your experiences: “The person…...
“She’s phenomenal!”
We received a call recently from a consumer ecstatic over the savings she discovered after speaking with one of our staffers at a utility bill clinic in Elmhurst. Theresia, of Wood Dale, learned how to shave $53.10 per month off her bills, thanks to guidance from CUB Environmental Outreach Coordinator Laura Goldberg.…...
Put up your dukes: Time to take on rate hikes
In 2014, CUB is fighting more than half-a-billion dollars in rate-hike battles from ComEd, Ameren, Peoples Gas and North Shore Gas (see the chart below). In response, we’ve established an emergency Consumer Defense Fund and we have a challenge for you: Help us raise $50,000 by April 30th to cover…...
Sign of things to come? Supplier wants out of community power deal
In an unsettling development in the electric market, an alternative power supplier wants to renegotiate the low price it secured for a Chicago suburb through July of 2015. Crain’s Chicago Business reporter Steve Daniels broke the news recently: Nordic Energy Services says the “polar vortex” winter jacked up its market…...
