In deregulated electric markets, the surfacing of a brand new retail electric provider website, with no more than two pages and a couple of pictures isn’t much of a rare occurrence.  If anything, these new entrants to the market help to reinforce the success and economic health of our competitive electric environment. But the site we found at ‘brightenenergy.com’ definitely stood out from the pack.

A text box on the home page states, “Coming in 2011, Brighten will offer electricity service for your home and business in select parts of Pennsylvania.” Undoubtedly little more than a place-holder for things to come, the message concludes with a simple call for its visitors to ‘check back soon’.

A simple and subtle ‘Brighten Energy’ logo adorns the header of the page, along with the  slogan “energy.savings.solutions”.  At first glance, this site seems like many others before it, but a few lines of text on the About Us page merits a closer examination: “Brighten is part of the Energy Future Holdings family of companies, which also includes TXU Energy … and Luminant….”

The take-away  is that the well-known Texas electric utility, TXU Energy, is indeed jumping on the PA Electric Choice bandwagon.  Pennsylvania, like Texas, also has a deregulated electricity market structure which has been attracting new retail electric providers from Texas, especially since the lifting of rate caps in January 2011. TXU, which is licensed to sell electricity under the Brighten Energy name, would be the latest to join the fray, although details are still uncertain regarding when it will launch the services in Pennsylvania.