The wake-up call has gone off: New Jersey residents are getting their PSE&G or other electric bills and, yes, they are shocked despite all of the reporting on higher rates.
From one NJ Facebook group: "Question. Did anyone else get an insanely high PSEG bill? I'm talking over $900?"
"$435 here and I just have a townhouse. It was double than the previous month. What on earth is going on with PSE&G?!"
"Yup. Everyone is getting crushed. I’m a few weeks away from going solar."
"TERRIBLE my usage compared to same month last year DOWN 9 percent yet my bill is UP 35 percent. Where are the congressmen and women!?!? Do ur job."
Adding to the burdensome bills later this summer: High temperatures and the impact on air conditioning costs.
Electricity consumption now has joined meat prices, car costs and other necessities that are chewing up our paychecks.Â
Consider reporter Dana DiFilippo's article Wednesday on New Jersey Monitor — "NJ utility customers may face bigger bills — again — after new electricity auction:
"Electric prices could rise again next year after the cost of capacity hit a record high in our energy grid operator’s latest annual auction.
PJM Interconnection announced the auction results Tuesday, triggering complaints from both lawmakers who demanded more accountability for its relentlessly rising prices and from environmentalists who blamed the spike on the company’s poky pace in adding more renewable energy and storage to the grid. Republicans, meanwhile, criticized Gov. Phil Murphy’s administration for relying too heavily on offshore wind projects that have not materialized."
Read the full article here.
Assemblyman Robert J. Karabinchak (D, Middlesex County) wrote about the issue in an op-ed on Wednesday on NJ Spotlight News:Â
"At the center of the problem is a conflict of interest," he wrote of PJM, the region's grid operator. "PJM's policies are shaped by votes from the public utilities that profit when energy prices go up and energy is connected inefficiently. These utilities have a say in decisions that ultimately benefit their bottom line, not necessarily the consumer."
Of course, the PR spin from PJM Interconnection says "it is not our fault." The grid's PR guy, Jeff Shields, wrote PJM's own op-ed in June in NJ Spotlight News, contending that "much of this rhetoric is misdirected and far from fair."
Gov. Phil Murphy's office on Wednesday sent out a news release announcing that the governors of the states that rely on the PJM Interconnection will meet in September.
Statement from Gov. Phil Murphy, Senate President Nicholas Scutari, and Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin on PJM’s Base Residual Auction.
