[Summit] National Grid, advice on energy choice (Glacial Energy)?

[Mark E. Santow]

hi neighbors: 


Hope all is well. Yesterday I and many of you were visited by a young man from Glacial Energy, trying to sign each of us up for a new energy supplier before 'rates go up' on Saturday. My inquiry here may purely be a function of ignorance -- I didn't know RI had become a state with energy choice. In any event, he asked to see the back of my electrical bill, and strongly urged me to sign up right there and then to make Glacial Energy our supplier (with National Grid presumably still providing the delivery, service and billing infrastructure). Presumably Glacial would be cheaper. 

Making such a decision on my front porch, with nothing in front of me to read, no one objective to talk to, and no prior research in the bank, seemed unwise. So I took his name and number, and told him I'd call him back. He wasn't too pleased with my diligence, though he was polite. 

Does anyone have any thoughts or advice on this? Assuming all of this is on the up-and-up, I'm a bit reluctant to sign on with a smaller supplier, since I assume a larger one (National Grid) would protect me at least somewhat from volatility in energy prices. But perhaps not. 

I assume some of my neighbors have already faced this, and done a bit of research (on what Glacial charges per KWH, for example, relative to National Grid). 

I do apparently have to make a decision, if I'm switching, today -- so there is some urgency. 

thanks! 
Mark Santow 
203 Rochambeau Avenue 


Mark Santow 
Associate Professor and Chair, History 
University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth 

Blog: http://www.chantsdemocratic.blogspot.com/ 
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/alinskylives 


" Dogma is the enemy of human freedom...The human spirit glows from that small inner doubt of whether we are right, while those who believe with complete certainty that they possess the right are dark inside and darken the world with cruelty, pain, and injustice." 


Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals, 1971 

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