The following is a press release from the COMPETE Coalition. RetailEnergyX.com disclaims any responsibility for the content of the release and makes no averment as to its accuracy

Washington, D.C. – Consumers in states with electricity competition have seen their rates decline over the past decade and a half while ratepayers without competitive retail markets experienced rate increases, a revised analysis of U.S. Energy Information Administration and Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows.

The analysis looked at electricity price data from 1997 through 2013 two ways. One considered states that benefit by being within the footprint of organized competitive wholesale power markets overseen by regional transmission organizations (RTOs) or independent system operators (ISOs). The other looked at the 16 states and the District of Columbia that have restructured their electricity markets to promote competition at retail.

The data, adjusted to take inflation into account, show that consumers in states that restructured to promote retail competition saw their rates decline by 3.6%, while ratepayers in states that retained the monopoly regulatory model saw their rates increase by 8.2%. Consumers in states within the footprint of RTOs and ISOs saw their rates decline by 0.9%, while those in states outside of organized competitive wholesale power markets saw their rates increase by 6.7%.

"COMPETE has conducted this exercise annually for several years now, and the data are irrefutable. Consumers in states with competition, whether at wholesale or retail or both, have seen their rates either decline or increase at a slower rate of growth compared with consumers in states without competition," said COMPETE Counsel William Massey. "These data show that competition works in the best interests of consumers, and we expect this observable trend to continue into the foreseeable future."

The benefits are clear even with the data broken down to account for differences in rates for residential and jobs-producing commercial and industrial customers.

In restructured states, residential rates declined 5.8%, while rates in monopoly states increased 4.3%. Commercial customers in restructured states saw their rates decline 12.1% while their counterparts in monopoly states saw a 2.1% increase. For industrial customers, in restructured states rates declined 2.5% while they rose 11.4% in monopoly states.

For residential customers in states within the footprint of RTOs and ISOs, rates decreased 3.1% while their counterparts in states outside of the organized competitive wholesale markets saw their rates increase 3.2%. For commercial customers in RTO/ISO states, rates declined 10.4% while their counterparts outside of RTOs and ISOs saw a 1.8% increase. For industrial customers, those in RTO/ISO states saw a 1.7% increase while those outside of the markets saw an 8.7% increase.

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