Maine electricity provider reaches 10,000 customers

Despite allowing competition between electricity providers for more than a decade now, Maine remains one of the lesser known markets for electricity deregulation. Nevertheless, one Maine electricity provider hit an important threshold in November, according to Village Soup.

Electricity Maine, a locally-owned alternate electricity supplier and one of the newest in the state, reached its initial goal of 10,000 customers in early November. The Bangor Daily News reports that the company boasted only a few hundred customers, as recently as August of this year, but the company has seen staggering growth since then on the back of substantially lower electricity rates.

"It sounds too good to be true," Danielle Beckwith, one of Electricity Maine's new customers told the Daily News. "There is no catch and there are no gimmicks. There’s just a better rate."

Maine opened up its electricity market, allowing consumers to switch electricity providers, in 2000, but the Maine Public Utilities Commission reports that only 3.2 percent of all the state's customers have made the change so far, and only 2.6 percent of "small" customers, which includes individual residences.