JEB-LOG

I'm up for renewal too. The "regulated" I think means lower income rates. I saw that link and wondered if Walton EMC would sell gas to me, but I don't know if I'm in their service area (not that it really matters since essentially you're paying them to give money to AGL for gas).

The whole deregulation thing is a crock. The easiest part of AGL's operations to monitor were how much they were paying for gas. They introduced competition there but it was a commodity that was based on market prices anyway. All they really did was let AGL continue their monopoly on gas delivery and introduce a bunch of marketing costs that had to be passed on to consumers. Not only that but AGL knew about how much gas they would need each year and could hedge prices by buying futures contracts. With "competition" you can't do that because you never know how many customers you'll have. If a provider reserves gas at some price and prices go down, then their customers will leave. I used to have gas bills that were $15 in the summer. Now I don't get bills less than $25. Sonny Purdue was the one that was behind all the deregulation when he was in the legislature.

I'm with Southern Company Gas who used to be New Power (a division of Enron) who used to be Columbia Energy. I've done well with them because they would lock me in at some price for 12-18 months and prices went up pretty consistently. I'm sure they got hammered. But I'm thinking prices have levelled out and should start going down soon so I'm going to a variable rate plan.

At the bottom of the page you linked to, it says this about Regulated Providers:

>>The Regulated Provider Group 1 customers - low income customers who are qualified by the State Dept. of Human Resources. Group 2 customers - high-credit risk customers who cannot obtain service from a marketer.