Electrons are costly little devils.

They'll get dearer after Dec. 31, when PPL rate caps expire.

Businesses are softening the shock by shopping for alternative suppliers.

Dutchland Inc., of Gap, for example, will be getting its electrons from Constellation Energy in Baltimore.

The medium-size manufacturer of pre-cast concrete tanks expects to save $30,000 to $40,000 over the course of a 36-month, fixed-rate contract, its president, Ben Kauffman, said.

Comparing suppliers "makes sense as you use more and more energy," Kauffman added. "I would encourage anyone to take a look at it."

So would Tom Baldrige, the president of the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce & Industry, partnering with Constellation to offer preferred energy pricing to chamber members.

So would Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission Chairman James H. Cawley, and even PPL Corp. itself, which was decoupled years ago from the power generating business.

Most businesses will pay more for electricity in 2010, period, said Cawley, who estimated the increase for typical small to midsize companies at 18 to 36 percent. But comparison shopping should enable them to minimize the hit.

Cawley said it behooves companies to weigh the length of the contract and other terms, such as fees to switch energy providers.

That said, it appears to be a buyer's market.

Some two dozen alternative providers are said to be "beating the bushes" statewide for commercial/industrial customers, according to Cawley.

The scene is not yet so lively on the residential side, where suppliers must peddle electrons door to door and homeowners are still adjusting to the idea of hefty rate increases (see related story).

"A lot more businesses understand what's going on," Cawley said, "and certainly the large businesses. Many of them have been shopping for quite some time now."

Choice is back
If you think this deregulated energy tale sounds familiar, you're right.

A dozen years ago, the state froze utility rates at 1996 levels to encourage electric choice for consumers.

But as wholesale costs for generating and transmitting electricity climbed over the years, early PPL competitors, such as Green Mountain Energy, could no longer underbid the artificially low retail electricity rates.

Another casualty was PPL Corp.'s own energy marketing and trading subsidiary, PPL EnergyPlus.

But choice is back. The climate again favors the challengers.

One reason, besides the demise of the rate caps, is that PPL locked in some of its energy purchases in 2006 and 2007, when prices for oil, coal and natural gas were historically high and rising fast.

Now, in the wake of the recession, they're low (although they're currently ticking upward again).

Alternative suppliers can buy comparatively cheap electricity and undersell PPL's so-called "default" rate, even though they still have to pay the utility to actually send power through its transmission lines.

And so PPL EnergyPlus is getting back into the commercial/industrial game, PPL Corp. spokesman George Lewis said.

"They are out there ... signing up customers in the PPL service territory."

ConEdison Solutions, a Consolidated Edison Inc. subsidiary in Valhalla. N.Y., is winning contracts here daily, according to an e-mailed statement from Robert E. Anderson, vice president of retail commodity services.

Also making inroads is GDF Suez Energy Resources, independently ranked in September as the country's second-largest commercial and industrial retail energy provider.

"It's a great time in Pennsylvania," said David Braun, GDF regional vice president.

According to Braun, GDF offerings beat the PPL default rates by 5 to 15 percent.

Alternative suppliers tout advantages such as individualized service plans, flex charges, lock-in rate options and green energy.

Fewer than 5 percent of GDF industrial/commercial customers opt to buy significant portions of their energy from renewable sources, Braun said, but those that do are apt to go 100 percent.

No matter what supplier commercial customers choose, PUC officials note, PPL will continue to deliver the energy — and some of it will be green.

Pennsylvania's year-old Act 129 requires electric utilities to cut their customers' annual electricity use by 1 percent by mid-2011 and by 3 percent by mid-2013.

Among the options for doing that: giving businesses incentives for tuning up their heating, ventilation and cooling systems.

 Dutchland Inc. is already planning to review its energy usage.

"That's a process we will probably embark on in the next two or three months to take a look at how efficiently we might operate," Kauffman, the president, said.

How much companies can save by greening up — and switching to an alternative supplier — depends on how much power they use and when they use it.

But switch they should, said Kauffman, who added that the most labor-intensive part of the process was gathering three years of Dutchland electrical consumption data.

"I'd love to say, 'Hey, I did all this work.' The fact of the matter was it was easier than I thought it was going to be," Kauffman said.

Steve Smith, controller for the Horst Group, concurred.

"The chamber member electric rates we received beat the independent broker rates from four other sources," Smith said in a prepared statement. "That, coupled with wanting to support the chamber, made this an easy business decision."

Baldrige, the chamber president, noted that the group first considered preferred pricing in 2001, and then "kind of held onto the concept" until the time was ripe.

 "When the accounting firms went for [the Constellation partnership]," he said, "I knew we had a very competitive plan."

Still, electric choice is not always an easy sell.

"People quickly glaze over" when you discuss this stuff, Baldrige said. Only about 350 of the chamber's 2,650 members have signed up or expressed interest in it thus far.

But time might be in the plan's favor.

When the caps come off in January, Baldrige said, "I think people are going to go, 'Oh my God!' "