A growing role for alternative energy sources

As sun streams through the windows into Jenny Garmon’s chilly townhouse, she goes about her morning routine dressed in a fleece jacket, long-sleeve shirt, jeans and slippers.

When the bill from Baltimore Gas and Electric hit $150 in January, the Piney Orchard woman and her husband, Chris, cringed and pledged to keep the thermostat around 65.

“It’s a new house, so it’s relatively efficient,” Mrs. Garmon said. “(But) it’s cold. You can’t heat the house the way we like it.”

The couple’s bill for gas heat is up 50 percent this season, and if forecasts are right, the electricity tab will jump 72 percent this summer when deregulation of the electrical market for homeowners takes effect.

The Garmons are at the paying end of a long energy supply chain stretching to distant parts of the state, nation and world — hundreds of electrical substations, thousands of miles of distribution lines and gas mains, a network of power plants, transmission grids, natural gas terminals and pipelines.

The Capital (Annapolis, MD)