As several readers have pointed out, Washington Gas Energy Services is now offering a three-year, price-lock deal on electricity that is lower than BGE's current standard price. The three-year deal is 10.9 cents per kilowatt hour. (Electric supply only. BGE's delivery charge, which is there no matter who your supplier is, is another couple pennies and change. Plus all the nuisance charges.) That's a tenth of a penny more than WGES's two-year package of 10.8 cents. The three-year deal is a no-brainer, and I wish it had been available when I locked in for two years a few months ago.

BGE's standard price this summer is 12.69 cents per kilowatt-hour. That'll dip to 11.53 cents for October through May. It may fall a little more after May, but it probably won't go much below the WGES deal. And in two or three years there's a good chance it will go much higher as the economy heats up and energy prices rise. Energy wonks are uncertain about what will happen in the next year; they're pretty darn sure prices will be up in 2011 and 2012.

Political uncertainties create some haze around the WGES deal and others like it. There is talk in Annapolis of starting to reregulate electricity and banning consumers and commercial users from buying from third parties such as WGES or Commerce Energy. If that happens it's unclear what will happen to long-term contracts. However it turns out, though, the risk that you'll pay more by switching to WGES than you would have by sticking with BGE's standard product over the next three years seems pretty small.

Don't forget Clean Currents, whose "100-percent wind" deal offers a package that supports green energy for 11.7 cents for two years. That's also less than BGE's current standard price.