Online energy procurement services are not new: by early 2001, at least 27 firms were offering them. The few that survived the dotcom debacle several years ago now handle sales of billions of kWh and cubic feet of natural gas, making this option now a stable part of the competitive energy landscape.
The two largest (in kWh volume) retail energy auction services are World Energy (www.worldenergy.com) and Energy Window (www.energywindow.com. ach uses Web-based software to receive, portray, and compare bids from vendors while customers sit back and watch their pricing drop until a winner is declared.