Author: Suzie Amanuel    5/26/2026      Washington City News Paper

This story was supported with funds from Spotlight DC—Capital City Fund for Investigative Journalism.

Selena switched electricity suppliers to save money. In November 2017, a man she knew from her Congress Heights neighborhood knocked on her door with a promise: Switch providers, lower her Pepco electric bill.

But what began as an attempt to lower her monthly costs spiraled into a yearslong merry-go-round of disputed electricity charges, mounting debt, and a chaotic Pepco bill.

In D.C.’s deregulated electricity market, consumers can choose from among several companies for their electricity supplier. Some advertise cheaper rates, others claim 100 percent renewable energy. Even if customers switch suppliers, Pepco still delivers the power and sends out their bills.

After seeing her costs spike, Selena, who asks that only her first name be used, says she canceled her service with Star Energy a few months later. But her bills didn’t go down. “My bills have never been that high,” she says. “I thought Pepco had gone crazy.”

In reality, the charges weren’t from Pepco. They were from a rotating roster of eight different companies that enrolled Selena in their services at least 14 times between 2017 and 2021, according to an email she received from Pepco. Along with Star Energy, the list included companies she’d never heard of including MPower Energy, Indra Energy, and Smart Energy.  Selena says she was enrolled without her knowledge and at one point, the list grew to 15 different unknown suppliers on her bill.

This unauthorized enrollment of consumers into high-interest energy contracts is so common that it has a name: “slamming.”

The practice left Selena—who pays her rent with the help of a government subsidy—thousands of dollars in arrears on her Pepco account.

Pepco directed her to dispute the charges with the third-party suppliers, but because it took years for her to realize her accounts had been switched around, the companies claimed she wasn’t in their systems, she says. In an email, a Pepco representative advised her to dispute any unauthorized enrollment with the Public Service Commission, but Selena says that her complaint to the PSC didn’t solve the problem either. She was left with no choice but to apply for utility assistance and pay down the accumulated debt.

Last year, Selena found two new suppliers lurking on her Pepco bill. Pepco gave her a new account number—one she now guards vigilantly, she says.

The District’s deregulated energy market is intended to create competition and lower costs, but it has left residential customers like Selena vulnerable to excessive charges and predatory practices, according to a September 2025 report by the DC Department of Energy and Environment. Now, Mayor Muriel Bowser is proposing legislation to enhance consumer protections for residential retail energy customers.

The DOEE report, which analyzed retail electricity data from July 2023 to August 2024, estimates that residential customers who selected third-party suppliers paid 70 percent more per kilowatt-hour than Pepco’s Standard Offer Service, or SOS as it appears on customers’ bills, resulting in $17.85 million in overpayments for consumers.

Households receiving utility assistance fared even worse, paying 80 percent more per kWh and losing $4.04 million. Although these households make up only 8 percent of all homes, they account for about a quarter of the accounts with third-party electricity suppliers, the report found.