The Super Bowl, the biggest night of the year for advertising, featured an Exelon-backed ad promoting utility-owned power generation in Maryland. The message was clear: Trust the utility, trust its vision, and hand it more control over ratepayers and their energy future.
While Exelon can afford multi-million-dollar advertising campaigns, the customer “relief” fund the corporation offered to select Maryland families amounts to about $68 per household. That’s a very small Band-Aid for residents who are already struggling with rising bills and inflation. Ratepayers deserve more than just pennies. They need accountability and change.
This extreme contrast says it all. When utilities have money to spend, they don’t invest it in meaningful, long-term relief for customers. They invest it in shaping public opinion, expanding their power, and protecting monopoly control.
Utility-owned generation isn’t about affordability or innovation. It’s about guaranteed profits. When monopoly utilities own the generation, the transmission, and the distribution, customers lose choices, competition disappears, and costs skyrocket even faster. Meanwhile, ratepayers often end up shouldering the burdens for projects they never asked for, including expensive ad campaigns.
If Exelon really wants to help Marylanders, it wouldn’t be spending millions on ads to persuade the public that it’s the “good guy”. It would deliver real, sustained relief and support competitive, independent energy solutions that put people, not profits, first.
A Super Bowl ad may grab people’s attention, but it doesn’t win people’s trust.
