Walmart to Start Offering Electric Rates to Residential Customers
Pennsylvania residential customers will soon have another energy company competing for their custom. The retail electric provider Texas Retail Energy LLC, owned by Walmart has until now supplied electricity only to its own stores, but that’s about to change.
The company has recently applied for an amended license with the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission to service residential customers. Its original license, issued in 2011, specified that the supplier would ‘provide electricity to only facilities within the same corporate family.’
Texas Retail Energy LLC is currently licensed to supply small and large commercial (over 25 kW demand) customers in the service areas covered by Duquesne Light Company, Metropolitan Edison Company, PECO Energy Company, Pennsylvania Electric Company, Pennsylvania Power Company, PPL Electric Utilities, Inc., and West Penn Power Company.
If approved, the new license would extend the company service to residential, industrial, and governmental customers in its current service areas, plus those of UGI Utilities, Pike County Light & Power, Citizens’ Electric Co., and Wellsboro Electric Co.
Thanks to the deregulated energy market, Pennsylvania energy customers have the freedom to switch their electric supply to a retail electric supplier (REP), while continuing to have power delivered by the local utility company. 2.1 million households and 250,000 businesses have already switched to Pennsylvania.
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