These days it seems like everything has a ‘smart’ version: you can control your smart lights and your smart thermostat from your smartphone. Then you can hop into your electric vehicle, charged with a smart charger, back up using a smart assist drive and head to the store where smart checkout options may exist. While each of these iterations of smart devices allow for more control, automation, and benefits to users, they are typical modular and limited in scope. However, the most important aspect of our daily lives that’s moving in the ‘smart’ direction is one that you may not give much thought to at all: the electric grid.
The concept of a smart grid has been around as an idea as far back as the 1990s, but in many ways we’re only really just now tapping into the smart grid and realizing the massive implications and potential use cases such a smart grid can bring. So, to the layperson who hears these buzzwords but doesn’t necessary note a difference in their interaction with their utilities, this begs the question—what, exactly, is a smart grid, and is our grid even close to being truly smart?
First things first, when talking about the grid people are referring to the network of transmission & distribution lines, power generation stations, transformers, and all other aspects of the electricity delivery system that takes electricity from its source to its end up in homes and businesses. The original infrastructure for the grid was built started in the 1890s in the age of Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, with it being built more widely and more advanced as time advanced.
While an engineering marvel for the times in which much of the grid was built, with the modern version reaching hundreds of thousands of transmission lines, many parts of the modern grid have been built out piecemeal from these original efforts. A grid for today and tomorrow needs to be rebuilt and updated to match our modern needs, and that is where smart grid efforts come in.
When discussing a smart grid, the definitive aspects is the ability for two-way communication between the utility and its customers. For decades, the only source of data would be meters outside buildings that could be read to display the amount of electricity used, but utilities had no way to actively communicate in real-time with customers. Such limitations meant that the ability to build in automatic controls or allow responses on the customer end was difficult or impossible. Smart meters, however, are being installed across the power system that allow customers to see how much electricity they’re using, when they use it, and its associated cost—all in live time. A system built up as a smart grid has sensors all along the process, can allow utilities to communicate with its customers (through price signals or information sharing) in an attempt to minimize or shift the level of demand during peak hours, and creates a much more efficient system, overall. Additionally, utilities can see and address problem areas in the transmission and distribution system (such as outages) in quicker order and utilize data to improve and optimize all aspects of the electricity generation and delivery process.
According to analysis from the U.S. Department of Energy, the adoption of smart grid technologies is “accelerating but at varying rates depending largely on decision-making at utility, state, and local levels.” Despite the transformative nature of a smart grid, institutional barriers and system-wide inertia (given the existing grid, as mentioned, is over a century old) have prevented a rapid and wide-spread deployment of smart grid technologies. While worldwide spending on the smart grid market is, indeed, growing quickly and expected to reach $189 billion in North America alone by 2020 (up from just $21 billion in 2013), and smart meter installations doubled from 2010 to 2016, the installation of smart meters (just one of the technologies that enable a whole system smart grid) still lagged behind as a tiny portion of total residential customers:
Source: EIA
Thanks to the parts of the grid that are already smart today, advantages gained include the increased efficiency of electricity transmission, reduced need to build out expensive new generation sources in lieu of demand shifting, improved opportunity to integrate renewable energy generation sources that are inherently intermittent (whether utility-scale or customer-owned) through minute-by-minute readings of supply and demand, quicker restoration of power delivery during outages and issues, and much more. These advantages not only benefit utilities through increased efficiency of operations, but those benefits are often passed along to customers through lower costs and increased reliability of energy delivery.
Many of the most exciting aspects of the smart grid are really only being tapped into today. For example, one area that’s only really being tested and implemented on a small-scale today but will allow great integration in the smart grid of tomorrow is the use of smart home devices that interact with the smart grid. While people are slowly getting used to the idea of smart lights they can control with an app or a programmable thermostat that can be adjusted remotely, utilities have begun looking ahead to programs that would enable smart home systems to respond to the two-way communication systems of a smart grid. In this type of program, for example, a utility can send price signals to a customer’s home to say that demand is about to exceed supply and their resources are strained. Where previously this scenario might have led to rolling blackouts or other undesirable outcomes, smart home products in a customer’s homes might receive the information that the supply is strained so the utility is temporarily adjusting up the price of power and can take that signal as a sign to dim certain superfluous lights or turn the air conditioner down a degree or two. While these responses would have a minimal effect on a signal customer, the aggregate impact of many customers adjusting in this way could be enough to improve overall grid reliability and prevent a utility from needing to pursue alternative, inefficient, and expensive solutions like building new power plants.
Going into the future, as smart communication aspects are continually built into new and upgraded parts of the grid, the reliability advantages of a smart grid will really become apparent. During power outages during emergencies or other significant grid events, the communication systems built into a smart grid system will not only be able to identify these issues immediately to allow the power providers to work on a resolution as soon as possible, but the smart grid will also be able to isolate the affected parts of the grid and bypass them automatically. Where typical outages often have a cascading domino effect on a larger portion of the grid, a smart grid will be able to automatically reroute electricity to the most critical parts of the grid (emergency services, vulnerable areas like hospitals, or critical applications like traffic lights), while also more readily integrating customer-owned generation sources into those emergency systems. These aspects of the smart grid of tomorrow will be a critical part of the national security discussion moving forward.
The utility industry has only just begun to realize the potential of smart grid and how such technologies can be implemented. The term smart grid is quickly shifting from futuristic buzz word to actively implemented energy strategy, bringing with it benefits to customers and utilities alike.
In most economic marketplaces you engage in on a daily basis, you are presented with a myriad of choices. There are many different computers you can buy from a myriad of competitors, the highway is littered with gas stations representing different companies, and even if you want a fast food burger on that highway you’re sure to pass half a dozen different options to scratch that need. The existence of those different options puts you, the consumer, in the driver’s seat: depending on what you prioritize you’ll make your selection. Do you pick the computer that’s got the highest memory or the one that comes with an operating system you’re comfortable with? Do you go to the gas station that has a lower price or the one with a great rewards card? And for that burger—do you go with the restaurant who represents your values more or the one where you get the most bang for your buck?
What does this have to do with energy? Well, the power industry is one of the only markets most consumers will operate in where they don’t have this type of choice and are required to buy the offering from the only option provided to them. And this isn’t a product that consumers can choose to go without if they’re unhappy with their provider, this is the electricity required to run their homes.
This setup is the source of much frustration to consumers who feel they aren’t getting the best possible service from their power providers, as their monopolies have removed the companies’ incentive to improve and innovate. To push back against that, a number of states across the country have implemented deregulated markets, or markets where customers can choose their power provider.
What does this mean for customers? And who can take advantage? Keep reading to find out.
For most of the history of the modern grid, monopolies have ruled the electricity generation industry. Because it would be economically and logistically infeasible for multiple entities to build out transmission and distribution systems to deliver power to homes, customers were presented with one option based on where they live and government regulatory bodies would provide oversight to ensure that those companies were delivering satisfactory service at a reasonable price to consumers.
However, by the end of the 20th century there were many who felt that utilities were taking advantage of this setup. Regulatory bodies allowed them to increase rates to help them build out new infrastructure and facilities, but there wasn’t any oversight to ensure these investments were actually helping out the customer. Worried that utilities were simply building capital-intensive projects because it was easy to get higher rates for it, a number of states started deregulating the energy markets.
When this happened, the local utilities would still be in charge of the transmission and distribution grid, maintaining the infrastructure and charging customers for their access to it. However, other operators would be allowed to enter that grid and sell their energy to customers through that grid. Customers would have the choice to sign contracts with utilities other than the legacy company to take advantage of the offerings of these other companies, and all the free market benefits of such an arrangement were newly available to them.
As noted regarding the choice of computers, gasoline, or burgers, customers can make their selection based on whatever criteria matters most to them. When it comes to power generation, you may assume that all energy delivered to a home is the same, but that’s the thinking the legacy utilities rested on without competition. Competition by other companies breeds innovation, creative offerings, and the best possible prices—all characteristics that ultimately benefit the customer.
If customers only care about attaining the cheapest electricity possible, they can seek out the power provider on their grid who is offering the best prices. For green customers who want to support clean and renewable energy sources, they can find the power providers offering the greatest carbon-free energy mix. The competition of energy choice even allows utilities to get creative with how to reward loyal customers through new and unique programs. Atlantic Energy, for example, offers customers utility bill audits and bundles of smart home products to bring energy use in homes to the 21st century, in addition to a clean energy mix that’s priced ahead of the competition. These are offerings that a monopoly utility company would not have to offer, because their customers have no option but remain customers. But with an open market with energy choice, customers are empowered to seek out the utility that matches their needs, values, and price points.
To date, a majority of states still do not offer energy choice, and there are also restrictions and complications in knowing where such choice and exists and for which customers. Some states restrict energy choice to just electricity and not natural gas, or vice versa. Other states offer for all sectors and some offer energy choice just to large commercial or industrial customers.
For residential consumers of energy, though, the following states offer at least some degree of electricity choice:
Connecticut
Delaware
Illinois
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New York
Ohio
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
Texas
Virginia
Washington DC
For residential consumers of natural gas, the list of states that offers some form of energy choice includes:
California
Florida
Georgia
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Montana
Nebraska
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
Ohio
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Dakota
Virginia
West Virginia
Wyoming
Washington DC
Because there are restrictions even within these states, it’s important to do research or contact your utility to see what options you have. For residents of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Maryland, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Washington DC, Atlantic Energy is one of the options you may have as an alternative energy provider. Contact us today to learn if you’re eligible and find out what great programs, prices, and clean energy services we can offer you thanks to the system of energy choice!
As utilities across the grid seek to get move into renewable energy and away from fossil fuels, one of the key aspects holding renewables back are their inherent intermittency. Intermittency means that they can not be relied upon to generate electricity whenever you want, because solar power needs to have sun and wind energy requires the wind to be blowing. When either of these factors, which are out of our control, are not cooperating, you cannot generate energy from them. Contrast this with baseload energy sources, such as coal, natural gas, and nuclear energy, which can be determined to be turned on whenever the grid needs them, regardless of extraneous factors. This intermittency is one of the main characteristics holding renewable energy back from really taking over the grid, but luckily there’s another energy technology that’s being developed in tandem that can help start to solve that problem: energy storage.
Energy storage is exactly what it sounds like—a type of technology that can take energy that’s generated and utilize it at a later time when it’s needed. As such, the connection with intermittent renewable energy is quite clear. When the sun is shining or the wind is blowing, these renewable energy sources can be used to create extra energy to save for later via energy storage.
This combination of energy storage with renewable energy is particular a good fit because the prime hours of generating wind and solar energy come during the middle of the day, when energy consumption is not peaked and so total power generation tends to outpace consumption on the grid. In scenarios without energy storage, this would result in extra energy being generated going to waste, being taken by neighboring grids for a negative price (i.e., one grid operator paying another grid to take it’s excess generation), or the uneconomical practice of curtailing energy generation and turning off perfectly good resources.
Given how inefficient a market is when the excess supply goes to waste, energy storage provides a market-based solution. Energy storage is often available as a grid resource where a utility or grid operator can simply take the cheap and available energy that’s being generated from renewable energy sources and store it in giant batteries on the grid, such as Megapack stationary storage solutions being built by Tesla. Similarly, energy can be stored on a small scale, via battery packs installed in homes (especially those who have on-site generation from solar rooftop panels) or even by mobile storage solutions that you may known as electric cars!
Wherever they are on the grid, energy storage is able to draw further value out of renewable energy resources.
You’re likely familiar with a basic form of energy storage littered throughout your house in the form of batteries. Batteries are an electrochemical solution that converts electricity to chemical energy to be stored and dispatched at a later time when it’s needed. However, that’s just one type of energy storage.
Another common form of energy storage is pumped hydropower. Using this technique, energy is used to increase the potential energy of water—either through pumping it up to a higher distance and/or by increasing it’s pressure so it’s ready to be released at a high velocity—and then releasing that water when the energy is required so it goes through a typical hydropower plant.
An emerging form of energy storage is thermal energy storage. The principal can be implemented in a number of techniques, such as through solar energy storage or molten-salt thermal storage, but the implementation is essentially to collect and store excess energy generation and use it at later times. For a micro-example, an HVAC system may take extra energy to make ice and then use that ice as a means to create cold air to cool a building later the next day when it’s warm out.
Given the possibility of energy storage solutions, what’s the real-life outlook look like? The best way to look at energy storage is that we’re looking at a tipping point, but we’re still a few years away from reaching it. One energy storage expert at Duke Energy noted:
If you are wanting to run your home just on solar and batteries, from where the technology is today, it’s going to be tough. It’s something we are keeping an eye on, but at this point it’s pretty overstated.
At the same time, though, the market, the technology, and the public policy surrounding energy storage are all moving in the right direction. Respected energy analysts at Wood Mackenzie see energy storage markets doubling from 2018 to 2019 and then tripling from 2019 to 2020. That’s massive growth, underscored by the continual bipartisan support that energy storage solutions get and the increasing R&D that’s being poured into the solutions.
Especially as energy storage becomes a part of an increasingly flexible, demand responding, and versatile grid, batteries and all other energy storage technologies are going to see the type of growth in the next ten years that solar power has experienced over the previous decade. Get ready for it!
As more awareness is brought to the need to increase energy efficiency and reduce wasted energy, not to mention the financial benefits that households receive by minimizing their utility bills, many people find themselves wondering what the best way to start is. You can take the basic actions that many people already know about, such as replacing incandescent lightbulbs or buying ENERGY STAR appliances, but is that enough? Many homeowners are left unsure what other options are being left on the table.
Luckily, this rising awareness and concern for saving energy, both for the sake of carbon footprints and household budgets, brings with it a growing industry of companies, professionals, and services who are ready and able to help you find the optimal and most cost effective energy solutions for your homes. Energy audits and home energy assessments are becoming commonplace, and if you’ve never had one performed on your home then keep reading to see how they can help you.
Energy audits and home energy assessments are two terms for the same practice. As defined by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, energy audits are “thorough accounting of the energy use of a building.” Put in plain language, energy audits simply mean taking stock of what uses energy in your home and how much energy each part of the home uses, then using that information to identify where energy could be used more efficiently or building upgrades can be implemented to minimize the amount of energy needed in the home to accomplish the same end functions.
The basic idea behind a home energy audit is that many homeowners look at their energy use and the ultimate power bill delivered to them each month as a sort of black box. You use the electricity or gas in your home as you need and in the end a power bill is delivered that’s usually about the same amount, but that’s just the family’s ‘assumed cost’ of energy. Sure, they may notice that months that are particularly hot see the utility bill rise because the air conditioner is working overtime, but that change is typically the extent of the variability assumed. Home energy audits pull back the curtain and reveal where, in fact, energy is being wasted when it doesn’t need to be and how that monthly utility bill can be brought down in cost-effective ways.
The U.S. Department of Energy notes that home energy audits should be any homeowner’s first step before trying to make energy upgrades to their house, noting that such assessments can come via Do-It-Yourself Home Energy Audits or Professional Home Energy Audits.
For the DIYers out there, homeowners can run through a checklist of items to look for from DOE, which includes:
Locating air leaks
Assessing ventilation
Checking insulation
Inspecting your HVAC system
Replacing inefficient lighting
Upgrade appliances and electronics
However, even equipped with this list of areas of the home to check, many homeowners will struggle to identify exactly what constitutes good or bad energy efficiency practices. For that reason, having a professional home energy audit completed is typically advised. Experts who perform home energy audits are trained to inspect each of the above items and more. They will certainly be able to detect areas of concern that you may miss with you untrained eye, and even more valuably they are also already knowledgeable in what type of solutions will be best suited for your home, your price range, and your specific needs.
Professional home energy auditors can be found in a number of ways. Many companies exist where performing these home assessments is what they do, and you can find some great options by checking out the listings for your area online or in the phone book, or even by talking to your neighbors to see if they’ve had assessments done. If you do talk to neighbors who have had energy audits, you may find that they’ve gotten theirs through the local utility or via the state or local government, all entities that commonly offer programs for home energy assessments. So, be sure to check with these organizations in your area to see if there such solutions are possible for you.
Just because a home is a new one does not mean that there aren’t opportunities for energy savings, as construction practices don’t always take energy efficiency as seriously as you may, and energy efficiency technologies evolve greatly from year to year.
Specifically, some of the most common findings from an energy audit that you’ll want to embrace via home upgrades include (but are not limited to) the following:
Replace inefficient lighting, appliances, water heaters, or HVAC equipment
Engage in maintenance measures in the heating and cooling systems, such as replacing air filters more regularlyInstalling high-efficiency windows or doors to prevent heat lossHiring someone to air seal your home and prevent leakage of heat and airUpgrade to a programmable or even smart thermostat.
The Alliance to Save Energy provides the following example table on how much these upgrades may cost you but also how much an average home may save in annual energy costs and assess the period of time before those cost are recouped:
This table is just an example, but it shows how a professional home energy audit can uncover the energy upgrades that are the most cost-effective (those with payback periods of less than 10 years) and which are not as low-hanging fruit for the family (those with longer payback periods).
In the end, you tend to trust other professionals to tell you where things are falling short, whether that’s a doctor to assess your health, a mechanic to evaluate your car, or an accountant to look at your taxes. So why not utilize a professional home energy audit to check out your home’s energy use—the initiative will almost surely pay for itself in the end.
Since the early days of Edison and the dawn of the utility sector, power providers have typically enjoyed a regulated monopoly over their customers, meaning end-users did not have any choice when it came to energy companies. There would be a single utility company that controlled the power lines going into homes and businesses and so customers would have no ability to take their business elsewhere.
In recent decades, though, more and more areas of the U.S. energy sector have been deregulated through government action, meaning that customers newly would have the agency to choose who would produce power and bill them for it. This trend is a drastic change in areas where it’s implemented, but because most people are so used to the status quo of regulated monopolies there is a lot of confusion and misinformation about what deregulation actually means for customers. So if you’re in a state that’s currently deregulated or there’s a groundswell of grassroots support for energy choice in your state, take note of the following need-to-know information about how deregulated energy works.
Where is energy deregulated and who can exercise energy choice?
Currently, states where energy is deregulated are in the minority. And for those states that do allow a level of energy choice, there are different levels of deregulation: some do just electricity or just gas; some allow residential customers or just commercial/industrial customers, and some restrict energy choice based on total energy use for the customer or other factors.
The states where state governments have enacted laws to allow for some level of energy choice in a deregulated electricity market for households are the following: Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Virginia, and Washington D.C.
However, because of the other restrictions that are sometimes instituted, it’s important for individual customers to do their research on where and if they may be eligible to take advantage of energy deregulation. For example, residents of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Maryland, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Washington D.C. are likely eligible to choose Atlantic Energy as their energy provider, but calling Atlantic and asking for more details can answer any questions you may have about your ability to take advantage.
How does deregulation affect power prices?
For most customers, satisfaction or dissatisfaction with their power provider comes down to one simple thing: what is their final monthly bill? As such, looking at how deregulation ends up affecting power prices is a crucial question.
A recent study by researchers at Ohio State University identified a lack of energy competition as being responsible for energy cost increases across Ohio. And while energy prices have been generally rising across the country, a detailed analysis of those rates separated into deregulated and regulated markets found that deregulated states only saw prices increasing by 47% over the past two decades compared with a 66% increase in regulated states.
So for customers looking at whether or not deregulated markets would be something they’d want, they need to look no further than these data points to realize the lack of competition in their local energy markets could be hitting their monthly budget more than they realize.
How does a different energy company get power to my home? Is new equipment required?
One of the reasons that regulated monopolies started in the beginning and have persisted since then is because of the high capital cost it takes to build out the infrastructure needed to transmit and distribute electricity from point of generation all the way into the final use in the home. It made more economic sense to only do that once by one company and that would be the way people got power.
Those economics still work that way, so if you are in a deregulated state and you choose an alternative power provider you’ll actually still get your energy delivered over the same grid and vast wired network. In these situations, you’ll also still end up paying the same legacy utility company for the transmission & distribution costs across their grid system, but the difference will be that you’ll pay a different company the cost of the power generation. It becomes an accounting exercise, as there is no way to ensure that the electricity physically created at the alternative electricity is delivered into your home, but rather you pay your new power provider for the amount of electricity you use and they ensure that amount of power is provided by them to the greater power grid.
In that way, you don’t need any equipment installed on your home and we can continue to use the same existing grid infrastructure, but you still get all the benefits of the power to choose your power provider.
What impact does deregulation have on power providers?
The system of monopolistic utilities is unique in the U.S. economy because it does not allow for competition and the benefits that bring to customers, nor the innovative momentum it brings to utilities. Companies that don’t have concerns that their customers may leave them for competitors who are better or cheaper lose the motivation to innovate. They can get complacent and thus not deliver the optimal service.
In areas with deregulated energy markets, though, competition makes everyone better. If customers are demanding more renewable energy in the mix, a new ‘green’ competitor may come along to attract these eco-conscious energy consumers. If customers are seeking neat perks, such as the smart home bundle that Atlantic Energy provides its customers, then they can ask their existing utility if they have anything like it and leave for the competition if they find something they like better. Deregulation forces the utilities to be more committed to the needs of customers, rather than simply finding ways to maximize their profits.
As a customer, the deregulation of energy markets puts you back in the driver’s seat. You can find the power provider who matches your needs and values best, not feeling beholden to the only game in town.
The energy industry is a rather unique one in the United States, as customers have for the longest time not been given a choice in whose services to use. From the beginning of the utility industry, back in the days of Edison and Pearl Street Central Power Station, a single company would own and operate the energy generation and transmission equipment and customers would only be given the choice: receive power from this company or don’t receive power at all.
Given how quickly constant and reliable electricity became essential for a healthy, safe, and productive daily life, the result was monopolies and a lack of competition among energy providers. In capitalistic societies, competition is cited as the driver of innovation, customer benefits, and progress, so it became no wonder why later into the 20th century the utility industry was largely known to be filled with inertia and was consistently slow to change.
In the past few decades, though, American customers have slowly and progressively been given the option to switch energy suppliers as regulations and politics have changed to allow for competitive energy suppliers. However, those with the ability to switch energy suppliers are still in the minority across the United States, while those without such an option continue to fight for their right to energy choice.
In the meantime, though who is eligible? There are a number of criteria to consider:
What State Do You Live In?
The first indicator of note to find out whether you might be eligible to switch energy suppliers is based on the state in which you live. As noted in the below graphic by ElectricChoice.com, there are 17 states (and Washington DC) where switching energy supplies is an option:
For those in the blue states (Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Virginia, Washington DC), they may be eligible given the rest of the factors. But for states in white (the majority of the country), energy choice is not available at all.
What Type of Energy Do You Use?
As the above map’s legend indicates, the next determinant is based on whether you’re talking about switching gas supplier or switching electricity supplier, since they are covered by separate regulations. Some states allow a degree of choice in gas markets, some in electricity markets, and some in both. So if you are in a state that only has deregulated gas (such as Colorado) but the only energy you use in your building is electricity, then you are not eligible to switch suppliers.
What Type of Customer Are You?
Beyond that, states that do have a level of deregulation are not completely deregulated and there are case by case bases to consider. For example, New Hampshire’s natural gas choice is not offered to residential customers but only commercial/industrial customers. Conversely, California’s electricity choices is available to residential customers but it’s strictly limited by capping how many people can participate at a time. This delineation of which types of customers are eligible is broken down well by the Energy Choice Coalition.
How Much Energy Do You Consume and Other Factors?
Beyond just the type of customer, there are also some restrictions based on the size of the customer. The availability of switching gas suppliers in Texas is only present for commercial customers who exceed 3,650 million cubic feet of gas consumption per year, meaning only the largest consumers. In Virginia, as another factor, customers can only switch electric suppliers if they are seeking to go to 100% renewable energy and their current legacy utility does not have such an option.
How Do You Really Find Out?
These are just some of the confusion and sometimes complex factors that will determine whether or not you are eligible to switch energy providers. Across the United States, it’s truly a patchwork of policies and regulations, making it hard for even an industry veteran to keep track of it all. As such, the best option is to contact your local resources and do your homework. For customers in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Maryland, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Washington D.C. you may be eligible to choose Atlantic Energy as your energy supplier, but best to call Atlantic and talk through your options with us.