Power companies nationwide shut off electricity more than 13 million times in 2024 to residential customers who didn’t pay their bills, a new report found.
Power was reconnected to residential customers that year more than 11 million times, according to the report.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration report is the result of a law passed in 2023, aimed at collecting disconnection and reconnection data from every state and D.C.
“Three years later, we just got the first set of results, which is a 2024 picture. A horrific picture,” Jean Su, energy justice director for the Center for Biological Diversity, told WTOP. “It’s not hyperbole in my mind to understand electricity as being a basic human right in this country.”
The environmental nonprofit pushed for the law after seeing people struggle to pay their bills during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We started investigating in 2020 the extent of disconnections, and we saw that only half of states actually require their utilities to report shutoffs at all, and that was just giving us a really distorted picture of how bad the crisis actually was,” Su said.
The findings, she said, reflect the nation’s energy affordability crisis.
“If a family gets an electricity disconnection, it means they are really making super tough household decisions.”
Su said the nation’s capital and the surrounding region stood out in a good way, because D.C., Maryland and Virginia all ban residential power customer disconnections when temperatures are extremely cold or hot.
In response to the report, Pepco and Dominion Energy provided statements to WTOP, and both described shutoffs as a “last resort.”
Pepco provided details about disconnections in 2024 for all reasons, ranging from nonpayment to customers moving away to safety reasons.
In 2024, Pepco says 11,880 customers in the District were disconnected and 6,900 were reconnected.
In Maryland that year, 15,100 Pepco customers were disconnected and 12,520 were reconnected.
Pepco said it “always makes multiple attempts to reach customers and offer extended payment timelines, flexible payment options as well as energy assistance programs.”
In 2024, it provided about $39 million in energy assistance to its customers.
Dominion Energy told WTOP: “When a customer falls behind on their bills, we reach out numerous times over several months to make sure they’re aware of their status and have access to all available resources to avoid disconnection. We work with each customer to find the best assistance programs and payment options that meet their individual needs, including Energy Share bill payment assistance, flexible payment plans, and Budget Billing.
Dominion said in 2024, 368,471 of its customers in Virginia were disconnected for nonpayment, and: “The vast majority were reconnected the same day, many within minutes.”
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