Prince George’s County to investigate high utility bills

The Prince George’s County Council unanimously passed a resolution Tuesday asking the Office of People’s Counsel to investigate high energy prices.

Council Member Ed Burroughs sponsored the resolution. His office is offering $500 in energy relief help to seniors who can least afford it.

“I had 1,635 senior citizens who have reached out to my office for support with their Pepco bills,” he said. “We’ve seen bills spike. Normally they would be $300, and now they’re over $1,200 in some cases. It’s a very serious issue.”

People have been trying to make sense of their high energy bills and are not coming up with a lot of answers

“It was like 800 and something a month for two months,” one community member told News4.

Another community member said his bills are “unfortunately increasing. Kind of disappointed about it, but reliable service nonetheless. It is unfortunate that every month I’ve been looking, and it seems to just be going up. […] I’ve had to just stop using it just to kind of mitigate the high costs, so there have been times where nothing is on and the bill is still kinda high.”

State and local governments are trying to get answers too — Why are they increasing and what can be done to rein in the costs?

A Pepco official explained that much of the problem is dealing with high demand — including from data centers — and not enough supply. The company said it supports efforts to generate more energy in the state.

“We do not make electricity. We are really the DoorDash of the energy provider. We are the ones that are bringing that electricity to your home and providing it 24 hours a day. But we have not had a rate increase in over two years,” said William Ellis with Pepco.

While elected leaders and the energy industry try to figure out how to increase supply and bring down bills, their customers believe something needs to be done soon to give them relief.

“I think there are solutions,” one community member said. “Well, one would be getting us back to using renewables — solar, wind, things that no one makes a big profit off of.”

The Office of People’s Counsel told News4 it is continuously engaged in investigating the causes of high energy bills and advocating for policies to mitigate high customer bills.