In Washington, D.C., the energy market is deregulated. Your energy is made up of two groups — utilities and suppliers. Pepco is a utility, and it’s in charge of making sure the energy your purchase gets to your home or business. The company maintains power lines and outages to ensure everyone receives the energy they pay for. By default, they also provide a variable supply rate for customers that have not switched to a retail supplier.

Suppliers or Energy Supply Companies (ESCOs) provide the power that gets delivered to you. They set their rates based on current market conditions and term length. In a deregulated market, they’re competing for business which drives rates down. Energy rates are changing daily. As a consumer, you can shop and choose the ESCO with the best rate.

If you don’t have a supplier, Pepco will charge you their default price to compare. This rate is a variable rate that changes throughout the year. When you start shopping suppliers, you can use this price to decide if a rate is in line with the market for your usage. Please note that some consumers of electricity in Pepco may not be eligible for Pepco’s default price to compare. If you have a high peak demand, it is likely that you are on real-time pricing with Pepco if you do not switch to a third party supplier. Real-time pricing changes daily and makes it difficult to budget.

Review Pepco’s current price to compare here before shopping.