Jul. 4--Customers of the state's two largest electric utilities are continuing to seek new power providers at a steady rate in an effort to reduce their electric bills.

Another 11,024 United Illuminating Co. customers have signed up with a new power provider since May 31, 2008, the date by which 32,306 customers had made the switch during the 10-year period since Connecticut lawmakers deregulated the electric generation business.

That means a total of 43,330 of UI's 325,000 customers, or 13.3 percent, have alternative electric suppliers rather than accepting the New Haven utility's standard offer service.

Al Carbone, a UI spokesman, said the company does not view customers who switch electric power supplier as a negative.

"Ifyoucansaveonthegeneration charge, you're doing a good thing," Carbone said, referring to the portion of customers' bills that makes up the largest part of the charge. "We have to buy the electricity in a prescribed manner. Some of the alternative suppliers don't have to do it that way and that's where people can save."

Over at Connecticut Light & Power, the state's other large electric utility, 48,456 customers have migrated to alternative energy suppliers in the past year. That means that of the 1.2 million CL&P customers, there are 134,000 who don't use the company's standard offer service.

That figure for CL&P doesn't include the roughly 17,000 customers of the utility who are enrolled in a program in which they voluntarily pay a "clean energy surcharge" on their monthly bills to support energy derived from renewable resources such as wind.

Mitch Gross, a CL&P spokesman, said that though customers of both utilities are switching to alternative power providers, it doesn't financially weaken the companies.

"The bottom line is that no matter who supplies your electricity, we are the delivery company and the business model is based on the earnings from providing that service," Gross said.

The portion of the customer base that has sought out alternative suppliers differs between the two companies.

Of the 134,000 CL&P customers who use alternative power providers, 92,000 of them are business customers, Gross said. UI has more residential customers making the switch: 31,084 of the 43,330 who have signed up with alternative power providers.

Carbone said that even those UI customers that haven't switched power providers will see a portion of their utility bills decrease over the second half of this year.

Transmission rates dropped Wednesday from 1.95 cents per kilowatt hour to just under 1.7 cents power kilowatt hour, he said. The rate will decrease again Oct. 1 to 1.35 cents per kilowatt hour, Carbone said.

"If you use 700 kilowatt hours per month, your bill went down by 92 cents as of July 1," he said. "By the time the transmission rate is lowered again in October, that same customer's bill will be $2.80 lower per month."

Carbone said the reason for the decline in the transmission rates is last December's completion of the Middletown-to-Norwalk power line.

................................................................... Luther Turmelle can be reached at lturmelle@nhregister.com or 789-5706.

-----

To see more of New Haven Register, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.nhregister.com.

Copyright (c) 2009, New Haven Register, Conn.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

NYSE:NU,

A service of YellowBrix, Inc.