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N.Y. ELECTRIC $HOCK

State rules aimed at curbing electric rates are instead shocking New Yorkers’ wallets, sending the price of power surging by 18 percent, a new study says.

Electric deregulation cost New Yorkers $3.4 billion in the 12 months that ended June 30 – as if each of the state’s 19 million residents forked over an extra $176 to power companies, according to data in the report from Power in the Public Interest.

And since deregulation took effect seven years ago, New Yorkers have overpaid a whopping $14.3 billion, the data shows.

Albany is taking note of the study by Marilyn Showalter, the group’s executive director and a past president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners.

Showalter met with aides to Gov. Spitzer earlier this month. And bills to undo utility deregulation will be introduced soon in the Legislature, said Assemblyman Richard Brodsky (D-Westchester), chairman of the Assembly committee that oversees utilities.

“What deregulation has meant is enriching utilities and hurting the middle class,” Brodsky said. “We are going to try to fix it.”

Deregulation advocates promised that lifting state controls on electric rates and letting consumers choose among electricity suppliers would lower prices.

But consumers show little interest in choosing. As of July, just 12.7 percent of Con Ed customers had changed electricity providers. And the reforms didn’t do away with Con Ed’s high prices for maintaining electric wires, which are still regulated by the state.

Showalter says the electricity market set up under state Public Service Commission rules isn’t a free market because its prices are set by the highest bidders, not the lowest.

If Con Ed suddenly needs several hundred megawatts of power on a hot summer day, it goes to the New York Independent System Operator, created in 1999 to manage the state’s wholesale electricity market.

State rules require the NYISO to give Con Ed’s business to the generating company making the highest bid.

“Imagine a sale of a bunch of automobiles, where various sellers bring a variety of cars from old junkers to Chevys to Mercedes, and everyone gets the price the Mercedes owner names as the price he’ll sell for,” Showalter said.

Showalter maintains that power prices in New York and other deregulated states are rising faster than in those where government sets electric rates.

But the utility industry and the state insist deregulation slashes prices. A state study last year claimed that electric bills dropped 16 percent between 1999 and 2004 after being adjusted for inflation.

New Yorkers’ electric bills are among the nation’s highest.

In the 48 contiguous states, only 4,100 households – all on islands off the New England coast – pay more for electricity than Con Ed customers. Con Ed is now before the PSC seeking what amounts to a 17 percent hike in residential electricity bills.

bill.sanderson@nypost.com