Regulate all utilities. It is ridiculous that Duke Energy Electric charges $14.00 for a customer fee. All utilities should be regulated on what they are charging customers and they need competition. It is not right utilities can charge what they want with no competition.
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Perhaps instead of more regulation, we can go the leaner route and apply “deregulation”. What if we loosened the restrictions on who and how end-users can provide power back to the network, thereby earning discounts on their consumptions. Take it a step further…what if an end-user was so successful at generating power from [who knows what and who cares – as long as it is a flow of electrons] and he sends those electrons back up the electrical grid to other consumers, that he is now competing with the original energy provider. What if this guy was being paid so much by the energy provider, that the energy provider had to actually find ways to produce cheaper electricity than this clever fellow and his new-fangled “Gobbledeegook Engine”. Now we have real competition on the energy grid. And what if Mary jumps in and starts generating electricity and uploading it to the grid? Now the energy provider and mr. clever fellow are competitng against Mary…and…down come the prices for everyone. Same example works for any and all utilities, including water and internet/cable. We need new ways for the little guy to compete with the big guy, using existing transmission infrastructure.
That, my friend is called a “deregulated free market economy operating on simple supply and demand forces”. So we probably need to focus on deregulating our utility grids, vs. regulating them further, don’t you think? 