Maryland’s deregulated energy market, in which third-party electricity and gas suppliers compete with the big utilities, isn’t delivering on promises from 1999 to lower utility rates. In fact, it’s led the roughly one-in-five Maryland households that have switched to third-party suppliers to overpay by a combined $255 million from 2014 to 2017, while allowing companies to take advantage of low-income customers with marketing tactics, according to a new Abell Foundation report.

Co-authors Laurel Peltier (a.k.a. GreenLaurel here at Baltimore Fishbowl) and electrical and nuclear engineer Arjun Makhijani concluded the state’s market has become “dysfunctional,” relative to the state’s original goal of helping customer save money. They deduced that by comparing billing data from the roughly 60 third-party suppliers with rates from the state’s five major electrical utilities (Baltimore’s is BGE, of course) and two natural gas suppliers–and by interviewing dozens of low-income bill payers who’d switched to third-party companies, most of them convinced to do so by marketing reps promising them gift cards and other small-time incentives.

A quick explainer: Third-party suppliers and major utilities offer the same energy, save for a select few firms that specialize in offering 100 percent renewable power to the environmentally conscious. But under a 1999 law passed by the Maryland legislature, major utilities like BGE and Pepco were required to sell their power plants, and third-party companies were permitted to purchase the generated power and sell it at their own rates to households. The idea was that the competition would drive down prices and help the consumer.

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