Duke Energy is the biggest utility in the United States. According to the company website, Duke Energy owns over 58,000 MW of generation in the United States and serves over 7 million customers. In states where Duke Energy operates, the utility maintains the poles and wires that go from the generation site to the household or business. These poles and wires are also called the transmission and distribution and each energy consumer that uses Duke Energy will pay a fee to the company. And yet, in deregulated markets there is also a separate part to the energy bill called the electricity supply, and these same households do not need to use Duke Energy to supply the electricity to their homes. In fact, in these deregulated markets, many of the local utilities, such as Duke Energy, actually support a customer’s switching over to retail electricity providers for their energy source as Duke Energy can only make a profit on the transmission and distribution fees, and not the electricity supply.
Duke Energy also operates a retail electricity supplier called Duke Energy Retail Sales that can actively market to Ohio residents to provide the electricity supply to those households and business. And recently, Duke Energy launched SwitchOnOhio.com, an energy plan comparison site that compares electricity supply rates from Duke Energy Retail Services to other providers. The site works by scraping data from the Ohio Public Utility Commission’s Apples to Apples site and publishing those rates on the SwitchOnOhio.com site.
Choose Energy commends Duke Energy for trying to bring greater transparency to the energy supply market in Ohio and for helping Ohio residents save money on their energy bill by finding their best electricity rate.
Cautions Using Ohio PUC Apples to Apples Site and SwitchOnOhio.com
Choose Energy, however, wants to provide a friendly reminder to Ohio residents that the PUC Ohio Apples to Apples website, and therefore the SwitchOnOhio.com site, are both quite deficient in providing an optimal and transparent shopping experience for customers searching for an electricity plan. Here are some key issues that Ohioans need to be aware of about the Ohio Apples to Apples site and the Duke Energy SwitchOnOhio.com site:
1) SwitchOnOhio and the Ohio PUC Apples to Apples site both allow energy suppliers to present short-term teaser rate electricity plans that may jump in price only a few months after a customer enrolls, causing a higher energy bill to an unsuspecting resident. ?Therefore, customers visiting those sites need to be very careful about the terms of the agreement before committing to a long-term contract.
2) Ohio Apples to Apples and SwitchOnOhio are not updated daily and rates on the site may be quite outdated and not available anymore to the consumer.
3) SwitchOnOhio.com and the Ohio PUC Apples to Apples site require a consumer to be re-directed to the energy supplier’s site once they have identified an energy plan. This typically means the consumer will have to re-start the entire searching process on the energy supplier’s website and may have difficulty even finding the same plan.
Why Choose Energy is the Best Online Destination for Energy Plan Enrollment
1) No Teaser rates or hidden fees in any plans presented by Choose Energy
While other sites may allow for teaser rates, ChooseEnergy.com does diligent work scrubbing each supplier contract on behalf of our customers to make sure that no teaser rates or other hidden fees are included in any of our plans. This detailed review that the Choose Energy team performs helps protect the customer and ensures a seamless integration with a new energy supplier. Choose Energy aims to help every resident or business identify their best electricity rate, with a great energy supplier, with no hidden tricks.
2) Choose Energy Plan Information and Rankings are Updated Daily
Choose Energy actively works with each supplier on a daily basis to make sure that every plan on our website is up to date and correctly priced with the right terms. What you see on our site is what you get, and the consumer doesn’t need to worry about rates or plans being unavailable
3) Choose Energy is a one-stop, secure platform offering complete enrollment
Unlike other comparison sites that will re-direct each consumer to a supplier site and make the user re-enter their preferences all over again, ChooseEnergy.com has designed the enrollment process to avoid these hassles and let consumers enroll with the supplier all within the ChooseEnergy.com domain. No link-offs to potentially unsafe websites. No phone calls. No door knockers. On the contrary, ChooseEnergy.com offers one simple enrollment process that takes less than 5 minutes all within our site.
4) Choose Energy Only Works with the Best Suppliers
While many sites will work with every provider in the market, ChooseEnergy only works with the best and most financially stable energy suppliers. Our team makes sure that each firm has significant financial protection and has positive standing with the Better Business Bureau. Additionally, we actively monitor all comments and customer feedback and will remove suppliers from our website that consistently underperform in customer service feedback.
In review, the Choose Energy team takes great pride in offering only the best service to Ohioans and we are grateful that thousands of customers have engaged with us as their trusted energy partner. We cant wait to work with more of households and businesses throughout the great buckeye state!
In Ohio, ChooseEnergy.com works with energy suppliers to offer comparison shopping for energy plans in the following utility service areas:
- American Electric Power (AEP)
- Consolidated Electric Cooperative
- Dayton Power & Light
- Duke Energy Ohio
- First Energy
- Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company
- Ohio Edison
- Toledo Edison
- South Central Power Company
