Pennsylvania Energy Tools & Resources

Expand the mapping application to view data regarding primary household energy usage by utility gas, bottled liquid petroleum, electricity, fuel oil, kerosene, coal/ coke, wood, solar, "other fuel" or no fuel across the CSO's coverage area. The data source is from the Census Bureau's ACS 5-year community survey (2022), and is organized by census tract. To use the app, turn on/ off the varying layers to view the desired energy source. Each census tract features the count of the desired primary energy source, and a color scheme was created from the percentage of the census tract that uses the energy source (energy source count/ total households). The percentage scheme can be viewed in the legend and the original count value can be viewed by clicking the census tract on the map. There is also a county boundary layer that can be turned on and off to help provide spatial context.

The above mapping application features spatial data layers on monthly gas and electric estimates, as well as annual "other fuel" estimates per census tracts (source: ACS 5-yr, 2022). Toggle on/ off the desired layers and click individual census tracts to view the range of bill estimates and the counts of households that fall into those ranges.

This is a valuable tool due to it's granularity of household expense data and user-friendly interface. The data gets down to the city level! This tool provides total expense estimates, breaks down monthly bills and compares city bill status' against other states (among other things).

The PUC, or "Public Facility Commission", is a collection of federal agencies that oversees the fair distribution of public utilities, such as electricity, natural gas and water. It is the PUC's role to monitor and regulate fair pricing and service quality among utilities, as well as mitigate service disputes between the company and consumer. The provided link is to the PUC's 2022-2023 yearly report of utility terminations and connections. Though the data is a bit vague due to the preservation of consumer identity protections, the report provides insight into the overall percentage change in termination and reconnections per utility company over a one-year period. Relevant utility companies to the area of interest for our study includes, PPL, UGI electric and UGI gas.

Another link to the PUC, this page features links to the PUC's yearly evaluation of reported consumer complaints (broken down into quarterly statistics). The evaluations provide beneficial insight into the timelines of large-scale disruptions or complications (i.e. meter reliability, billing issues, poor customer service), that the team may learn of in participating household interviews.

Completed with Funding Support from Pecan St. Inc., and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation