[bestattack]

How much will an average household save if they go with you guys? I remember looking into this at one point in NYC, getting confused and thinking that the power companies were all pretty much the same. If you aren't saving people a substantial amount of money then it's not likely to be worth it for them to switch, which is my guess as to why so many users stick with the defaults.

Also, how will you get users? The reason I looked into it at all was that I was visited door-to-door, but I blew them off and only did the research when I realized they weren't completely full of shit.

[magthor]

Great question. The answer is ‘it depends’. For example right now in CT the incumbent rate is 9.55 cents per kilowatt hour with Eversource. But you can get 5.99 c/kWh with Public Power for 8 months if you pay $39 enrollment, or 5.98 c/kWh with Sunwave for 6 months with no enrollment fee but a $50 cancellation fee. These are just a couple examples, there are dozens of offerings. As you noticed, the market is confusing, almost by design! But it definitely pays to shop around. Given average household electricity use of around 750 kWh/month we project we will save customers around $100-$300 per year.

We are planning to offer our service for between $30-$50/year, and will offer a money back guarantee if we don't save the customer at least as much as our fee over the incumbent supplier. The idea is to make it no-risk for people to try us. But the value proposition isn’t just saving money, it’s saving time. We handle everything so the customer doesn’t have to spend the time and mental effort to track the market and manually switch suppliers.

The reason we can do this is we are automating the whole switching process; hence it will not cost us much to switch a customer, we'll be able to switch many customers at the same time, and we'll be able to switch customers as frequently as needed to take advantage of short term rates. As we gain a large customer base, we'll also have leverage to negotiate better rates with suppliers, saving customers even more.

Ironically the costs of door to door and telemarketing is part of what creates the opportunity here. NYC may be the exception but outside of the City it's just too cost prohibitive for traditional brokers to do. They focus on the bigger wins (manufacturing and commercial). We will leverage internet / social (facebook ads, promoted tweets, adwords etc.) to reach the individual households. Also we will offer a referral program which will encourage customers to get their friends to sign up. Finally physical events (home shows, street fairs etc.) will help educate potential customers and those who do not use the internet as much.

By the way New York is next on our list after Connecticut (my co-founder Tom is from NY), so if you’re interested please register at utiliz.co!

[hotpockets]

I was also visited door-to-door, leading me to research gas rates here :

https://w2.lara.state.mi.us/GasChoice/Choice/CurrentOffers?a...

There is a sufficient disparity in rates to make a business out of it, in my opinion.

[tomplace]

Absolutely. While our MVP is residential electricity in CT we are building a model that scales to all 14 deregulated states, all consumer types (commercial, manufacturing etc.) and gas.