Because we haven't had a utility change its meaningless name to another meaningless name in awhile

About Competitive Supply
http://www.nstar.com/residential/competitive_supply/about.asp

Your electric service is separated into two components - delivery services and supplier services. The two supplier service options under the "Supplier Services" section of your bill are Basic Service or Competitive Power Supply.

The Department of Public Utilities (DPU) licenses competitive suppliers and maintains a list of companies that supply power within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. A number of these licensed competitive suppliers do business with NSTAR. Each Competitive Power Supplier sets its own price for electricity and provides service to various cities, towns and types of customers.

To see a list of competitive suppliers that may serve customers on your rate, visit the Competitive Suppliers page.

If you choose a Competitive Supplier, NSTAR Electric will continue to deliver power to your home or business, read your meter, care for the poles and wires, provide customer service, and restore power when there is a service interruption.

Picking a Competitive Power Supplier
You may wish to shop the competitive market. We encourage you to compare the Competitive Suppliers' options to Basic Service. In addition to price, other service offerings may be of value to you. The length and terms of your contract with your supplier, as well as billing, payment, deposit, warranty and other information are also important to review.

If you choose a Competitive Power Supplier, the supplier's rates will go into effect on your next scheduled meter reading date provided NSTAR Electric had notice of this change at least two business days prior to your next scheduled meter reading date. Your next scheduled meter reading date appears on your electric bill.

After choosing a supplier, if you are currently a Basic Service Fixed rate customer up to six months of your past billing will be recalculated to reflect the month-to-month Basic Service Variable rate. This adjustment may result in either a credit or debit.

Still have questions? Visit NSTAR's Competitive Supply Frequently Asked Questions page for answers to some common customer questions.
http://www.nstar.com/residential/competitive_supply/about.asp

Old habits die hard.

At the end of the day, you still have to deal with NStar, or whatever stupid name the Edison wants to call themselves. It's their wires that delivers the electricity to your house, so it seems half your bill goes to them anyway, and when you have problems (wires down, unreliable service) NStar is the source of the problem.

The new entrants just seem sketchy. And their sales tactics seem to reinforce that. So at the end of the day it still seems like a monopoly to me. If I were buying energy from the generator (which isn't possible, as they are all on a grid anyway) then I could say "yes, I get my energy from Seabrook," but I can't, so it's a mystery to me.

(What? You made a good point germane to the discussion. I want to encourage this.)

Is the array of solar panels on my roof. It's sized to produce more than I use, and I sell my excess power to National Grid. I had to pay them once, last winter, when snow buried the panels for a couple of weeks. I think it was about $15. Every three months I get a check for between $200 and $750, for the SRECs. When the SRECs end after 10 years, I'm hoping battery tech will have advanced enough that I can get off the grid completely.

If you own a southern exposure that's not shaded, it makes all kinds of sense to invest in solar panels. There are even outfits that will put them up at no cost to you, and give you a reduced electric bill (but you won't own those panels.)

How have any of you kind folks figured out what Competitive Supplier for electric service has the best offer?... it's challenging digging through the information at
http://www.mass.gov/eea/energy-utilities-clean-tech/electric-power/elect...

and at
http://www.nstar.com/residential/competitive_supply/about.as

And it caused me trouble when I changed PCs at home and couldn't figure out my password that was automatically entered when I logged it for 4 years beforehand.

The rebranding will cost Northeast Utilities (the parent company of NStar) far less than their current situation because they'll be able to centralize all of their marketing, sales, stationery/mailers, etc.

Also, I hope you're joking about the cost of ink. In case you're not, the new logo is monocolor for starters. That means single ink printing instead of the blue/yellow/black of the NStar mailings. That's a huge cost savings right off the bat on printing costs.