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The passage of Senate Bill 1 in 2024 that required both corporate and individual salesperson licensing and restricted the terms of sales contracts resulted in no applications to serve residential customers when the law went into effect last year.

Maryland lawmakers were trying to prevent predatory practices.

Frank Caliva, national spokesperson for the Retail Energy Supply Association, a trade group, said the Maryland residential market “no longer exists in any meaningful way.”

Caliva said the state public service commission had enforced rules against REPs which did not respect consumers in the two years prior to the passage of SB 1.

The association supported the enforcement effort, he added, which was so successful that complaints dropped tremendously in 2023.

“The commission was using its authority appropriately, and then the legislature offered a solution in search of a problem,” Caliva told Magnifyi. “That resulted in the effective closure of the residential market.”

The Office of Peoples’ Counsel of the state public service commission supported the 2024 law and later said “suppliers may have decided to exit the market.”

Alexis Foxworth, a senior advisor to the commission, said it saw an uptick and eventual decline in consumer complaints during the rollout of SB 1, mostly throughout the fall of 2025 and early 2026.

Complaints most relevant to the 2024 law involved customers stating that suppliers returned them to standard offer service, Foxworth said, resulting in higher utility bills in some instances.

The return to the standard offer was the result of a legislative and commission directive requiring suppliers to stop selling the receivables of retail residential accounts by January 1, 2026.

Receivables can be purchased by various kinds of companies, including utilities, which would then send consumers a consolidated bill.

Under SB1, REPs would have to send their own bill, so consumers would get one bill for distribution service from the utility and another for energy from the REP.

The law included many more changes to residential retail energy market.

SB 1 enhanced licensing requirements, increased penalties, prohibited commission-based compensation for salespeople and eliminated early termination fees.

Cold calls and door-to-door sales have ended due to the licensing requirements. REPs are able to use inbound calls, direct mail, self-service internet enrollment and the price comparison web site run by the commission to get residential customers.

The 2024 law also eliminated most variable rate contracts.

Residential electric suppliers could only offer electricity at a price below the prior 12-month utility standard offer service rate, and residential plans could not exceed a 12-month term.

“Pricing and terms were capped in a way that does not make sense,” Caliva said. “The Utility Relief Act has adjusted them, but not enough.”

The act extends the maximum allowable length of a contract to 36 months and makes changes to the price cap scheme. Suppliers can now reference the customer’s standard offer service based on the signing date instead of a trailing 12-month average.

Contracts for 23 months or less are still limited to 100% of the standard service price, contracts for 24‑35 months can be for up to 105% of the price and contracts for 36 months can be for up to 110% of the standard offer.

Variable rates for certain products, including those that use time-of-use rates, can be adjusted not more than twice in one year, or can never exceed the standard offer rate.
The same kind of rules were put in place for retail green power, “to the point where they were almost introducing utility rate regulation,” Caliva said. The 2026 act did not change those provisions.

Licensing requirements were also unchanged in the latest Maryland law.

The commission adopted separate license applications for energy salespersons and energy vendors making residential sales starting July 1, 2025. Under an earlier system, only suppliers were licensed.

To apply for a salesperson license, an applicant must pay a fee, be fingerprinted, indicate any past civil or criminal history, file a bond with the commission, be deemed technically and managerially competent and complete a training program.

“To date, the commission has received zero salesperson applications,” Foxworth told Magnifyi earlier this month. “With no suppliers, there is no need for the salespersons who work under and with them.”

Salesperson vendor licensing is a very onerous obligation, Caliva said, compared with the supplier being licensed and being responsible for its own agents.

A poll in Maryland conducted on behalf of the association at the turn of the year found that 87% of respondents Marylanders thought choice among energy suppliers was important.

More than 77% of those surveyed agreed the state should have true competition. Slightly more men than women thought that this issue was important. Republicans and unaffiliated voters felt supplier energy choice was important by more than 10 percentage points compared to registered Democrats.

Candidates for public office who are against supplier choice would be less likely to get respondent votes among 48% of those surveyed.

“The bottom-line message is that energy bills are still going up, and without competitive pressure in a residential retail market, there has been a negative outcome, Caliva said. “The fact that they cannot shop is definitely a source of frustration for Maryland consumers.”

Current law also makes Maryland less attractive to serve, he said, when REPs can pursue a dozen other state retail energy markets.

Some REPs want to serve all customer classes if they are going to enter a market. “We were selling a fair about of residential in Maryland,” an REP owner told Magnifyi this week. “It was a stupid idea to take choice away, but I have other places I can do business.”

State senator Malcolm Augustine, one of the sponsors of SB 1, told Magnifyi that the commission “continues the process of implementation with fidelity.”

“I am confident that statutory changes passed in 2026 session will similarly be implemented with fidelity while protecting residential ratepayers,” he said in an email.