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Summer educational series for utility customers

The Office of People’s Counsel offers short educational webinars on topics that impact you. Each live webinar is between 15-30 minutes long and is hosted by our Director of Consumer Assistance and an expert on the presented topic. These short sessions give you the chance to learn new things and to ask questions that you have on your mind. Check out our summer series and keep checking back for new posted content You can also sign up for OPC’s newsletter to be alerted on new topic areas. If you have an idea on something you think OPC should do a short webinar on, send an email to opc@maryland.gov. Sign up for one or all of our summer series live webinars.

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OPC is celebrating 100 years

When the Maryland General Assembly created the People’s Counsel in 1924, only about half of American homes had electricity, few Maryland households had refrigerators, and it would be decades before air conditioners, color TVs, and internet service were commonplace in Marylanders’ homes. As the first consumer advocate office in the nation, the Maryland People’s Counsel’s early work focused as much on monopolies over streetcars and toll bridges as it did electric and gas utilities.

Today, we no longer have streetcars to regulate, competitive markets have replaced regulation for most telecommunications, and OPC’s work involves technologies and issues that would have been fodder for science fiction in 1924.

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OPC Releases Report on Current and Historic Utility Rates and Charges

OPC’s summer 2024 report shows how utility rates have changed over time. Using a variety of figures and tables, the report reveals that most Maryland utility customers have seen their gas and electricity rates increase substantially over the last 10-15 years, with some rates increasing by multiples of two or three. The report focuses on the amounts that utilities charge their customers for delivering electricity and gas to customers’ homes and businesses, as distinct from the supply (or commodity) charges. While the rates of many of the largest utilities have escalated significantly in recent years, other utilities have only seen modest rate increases, tracking inflation rates. The utilities with rapidly increasing delivery rates have taken advantage of regulatory policies that encourage utility spending on capital infrastructure—such as the substations, poles, and wires of the electric utilities and the pipes of the gas utilities—by allowing utilities to recover such spending, along with a profit, on an accelerated basis.

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