Sam Evans-Brown’s piece “Your electric bill just went crazy” has some good tips for reducing your electricity bill, but I would take issue with his saying natural gas prices are the cause of the rate hikes given to Unitil and Eversource. These utilities contract for power every six months. The prior rates for June through November were contracted in May. Natural gas prices on the commodities market in May ranged from $8.30 to $9.50. The electricity rates beginning in December were contracted in November. Natural gas prices in November ranged for $6.20 to $8. If natural gas was the culprit electric rates should have dropped. On Dec. 28, natural gas for delivery in January is listed at $4.78 and $4.02 for delivery in May.
Maybe the problem is how the price for electricity is set. If a utility company says it needs 100 units of power and producers of 99 on those unit asks for $4 a unit, but the producer of the last unit asks for $8 all the producers get paid $8 a unit. Maybe the utilities would be better off buying 3 months of power instead of 6 or buying less than they think they need to get a lower price and buying the rest as needed. Even if the rest is 3 or 4 times as costly the net expenditure would be less.