Shopping for Kilowatts

Only early December and already I know the holidays will be ruined. (Historical note: this is the earliest point at which I have known that, breaking the previous mark set in 1979 by a full six days.)

As if the Christmas-New Year season isn’t stressful enough, what do they do? They pour it on. Besides deciding whether or not to send Christmas cards, whether or not to visit out-of-state relatives, and whether or not to buy presents for siblings or claim forgetfulness, now another decision looms.

Starting Jan. 1, deregulation of electricity goes into effect in California. I have enough trouble buying a pair of pants. Now I have to shop for electricity?

Oh, boy.

What does a person look for when shopping for electricity? Are there trends? Is there a place to go to read up on the subject? How do you know if your electricity is worse than your neighbor’s? Where do you return poor electricity?

I was under the impression the whole electricity issue was pretty well settled with Ben Franklin and Thomas Edison. Apparently not. Something more is in the wind. An executive of a new company has been quoted as saying, “The next 10 years in electricity will see more new products and services than we can possibly envision today.”

The next 10 years in electricity? Will we look back fondly someday on “The Decade of Electricity”? Will my lunch mates and I soon be saying to each other, “Hey, can you believe what’s happening with electricity these days?”

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I suppose much of my sense of dread comes from the word “deregulation.” In the past, I have not handled such decisions well. I remember when they “deregulated” the airlines, and I buoyantly hopped a shockingly cheap People Express flight, only to board something roughly the width of my shower stall and fly to New York in July with no air-conditioning and seated in a row with a goat, a man on stilts and a mannequin.

I trust they’ll monitor electrical deregulation a little better.

Anyway, knowing a major utilities decision is fast approaching, I sought help from a knowledgeable local source: Charles Phillips of Mission Viejo. I asked if he were neutral on the subject, and he said, sure, if I was willing to overlook his 37 years with the Edison Co.

Why not, I told him.

I asked Phillips, now retired but still consulting for Edison, what I should look for when deciding on my electrical needs.

“If you try to find any specific knowledge on this, it’s going to be extremely difficult,” he said.

Deregulating electricity is unnecessary, Phillips said, and offered this observation: “If you’re satisfied with Edison, why change?”

All right, he’s disqualified on the grounds of being a company man.

But he framed my dilemma: How do I know if I’m happy with Edison or not? I’ve gotten one or two out-sized bills in the last 10 years that made me highly suspicious. I wrote a column about one of them, and the company sent out an inspector who gave my appliances a thorough going-over. He found nothing out of the ordinary, except for my bill.

I guess I was dissatisfied with Edison that month, but what could I do, fire them?

Now, I guess I could.

If new companies are out for my electricity dollar, I haven’t heard from them. I tend to ignore TV commercials and junk mail, but I’ve caught an Edison TV spot saying something like the only thing I need to do about deregulation is . . . nothing.

Whoever thought of that marketing strategy is on to something. If there’s one thing at which I excel, it’s doing nothing.

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The electrical industry is reportedly a $300-billion a year revenue-generator. I wonder if that has something to do with the movement toward deregulation. Most reports I’ve seen suggest that California residents will get at least a 10% reduction in the new year and that, nationwide, the established power companies may lose at least 10% of their customers.

So be it. When it comes to electricity, I remain in the dark.

If I were responsible, I’d start doing some homework. Thus far, though, my thoughts on the subject only go this far: If the only alternative is “People Express Electricity,” I’m probably sticking with Edison.

Columnist Patt Morrison is ill.