This is really confusing as today I happened upon PPL EnergyPlus. There is also an “Energy Plus” that is a separate company in no way owned or related to PPL.
PPL EnergyPlus sells retail commercial electricity service in Pennsylvania at this time and no other states. Energy Plus sells both commercial and residential electric service in PA and many other states such as Texas.
The confusing issue at hand is that both of these retail electricity providers operate in Pennsylvania. Energy Plus operates in other deregulated electricity markets as well but imagine trying to build a brand with two companies showing almost identical names both in the successful deregulated energy market of PA?
PPL of Pennsylvania is quite a bit larger than “Energy Plus” so “Energy Plus” will likely piggy back and build an even larger customer base simply because of the confusion regarding the names.
PPL EnergyPlus connects the words Energy and Plus together to form one word which seems to be the cool thing to do these days in energy brands.
To sum this up:
- The two Energy Plus names are slightly different. Energy Plus and PPL EnergyPlus
- Energy Plus is owned by Energy Plus Holdings, LLC
- PPL EnergyPlus is owned by PPL Corporation (Pennsylvania Power and Light Corporation)
- PPL EnergyPlus sells only commercial electricity service in Pennsylvania at this time.
- Energy Plus sells commercial and residential electric service in Pennsylvania at this time.
Will commercial customers who become acquainted and familiar with the brand name Energy Plus in PA become confused as to which company to call for commercial electric service? You better believe it! Energy Plus is one of the fastest growing electric companies in Pennsylvania right now and with the help of piggy backing off of the PPL EnergyPlus brand they are likely to gain even more traction in PPL’s own backyard. Ouch! Don’t you hate identity theft?
Now I am not sure where all of this falls in the realm of the law and do not know if either company has infringed on a brand name or not but it sure does look like that. At this point I am not even sure if this was done intentionaly. I just find it to be extremely poor judgement.
In Texas the Public Utility Commission would knock down a brand name that so closely resembles a competing electric companies but that does not seem to matter in PA.
I am not on either side here especially not knowing the whole story but I am only commenting on the weird conflict of two energy companies operating in the same territory with extremely similar brand names.
If you are a customer or potential customer of either of these companies feel free to input your comment below if you have been confused by this mess, accidentally signed up with the wrong electric company or some other happening.