As Hanah Cho reports, BGE wants a rate increase for distributing gas and electricity that could add up to $20 a month year to the average electric bill and $30 to the average natural gas bill. Nice try, BGE. These are charges for BGE's network of local pipes and wires to get the energy to your door. They're separate from the energy and transmission charges that create the energy and ship it cross country to the Baltimore region. Distribution charges are still fully regulated by the Public Service Commission; energy charges aren't. BGE will probably get some sort of increase.

Perhaps they're due after nearly two decades of frozen or declining distribution reimbursement. Even the Office of People's Counsel, which represents residential ratepayers, seems to think BGE is entitled to something. Its expert said BGE needs an increase of about $21.5 million for distributing electricity and about $8 million for distributing gas rather than the $47 million for electricity and the $30 million for gas that BGE wants. BGE is presumably hoping that falling energy prices will help regulators and consumers forget about the disaster of deregulation, which led to huge cost spikes for all users. (And no, the BGE increases of the 2000s were NOT caused merely by energy inflation. An open market with fungible megawatts allowed BGE parent Constellation Energy huge markups on the cheap energy generated by its Calvert Cliffs nuclear plants.

Under regulation those low costs would be passed on to customers.) But nobody has forgotten. The BGE energy increase was topic A of the first gubernatorial contest between Bob Ehrlich and Martin O'Malley. The reprise of that match has made the memories keener, and this PSC knows that. BGE won't get anything close to what it wants. Here is today's column on how to save money from falling electricity prices by switching from the standard BGE product to an alternative provider.