Philadelphia’s weather is downright tropical in the summer, but that can be hard to remember in January as residents crank up the heat and dread the monthly heating bills. PECO’s residential heating rate takes out some of the sting for households that heat with electric power.
PECO’s “RH” rate, as they label it, “is designed for customers who heat their homes with electric systems, such as electric baseboards, electric furnaces, or heat pumps,” according to a PECO spokesperson who wrote to Grid. The rate, which applies from October through June, reduces the distribution charge by about 2.3 cents per kilowatt-hour, so that a customer using 1,000 kWh per month would save about $23 per month.
We serve households up to 200% of the federal poverty level, and PECO’s low-income program caps out at 150% of the federal poverty level.”
— Joline Price, Community Legal Services
Joline Price, an attorney at Community Legal Services, works with clients to get their utility bills down. She finds that the residential heating rate can help clients who earn too much money to qualify for other savings. “We serve households up to 200% of the federal poverty level, and PECO’s low-income program caps out at 150% of the federal poverty level. So when someone is in between, and using electricity for heating, they’ll save money when they go on the residential heating rate.”
PECO says that it works to identify eligible households when they move in and sign up for electricity and during home energy audits the utility conducts through its Low-Income Energy Usage Reduction Program. Customers can otherwise sign up for the rate by contacting PECO. They will need to provide the make and model of their heating system, submit a copy of a lease indicating that the rental unit is electrically heated, or have a PECO technician come out to verify the electric heating system.
Price says the documentation requirements can pose a burden for low-income households. “They don’t make it easy,” she says. Price also pointed out important differences between how the rate applies to customers with baseboard heating, which must be the sole heating system to qualify for the RH, versus heat pumps, which have to be the primary but not the only system. “You can surmise that there’s a class difference and we think that’s problematic.” And the rate doesn’t apply at all for households using only space heaters. “People are using space heaters because they don’t have another option, because their boiler or furnace is broken or their gas has been cut off.”
