Do you shop around for electricity the same way you do for a new car or groceries? If you don’t, you’re not alone.

At this point, most state residents don’t.

But that could change if a years-long trend continues,

Energy shopping has become more popular since 1999, when the Pennsylvania’s Office of Consumer Advocate began keeping statistics.

About 500,000 customers, the bulk of them residential, were using alternative energy suppliers by the end of that year, according to consumer advocate records.

As of April, the most recent month for which data was available, more than 2 million customers statewide had switched or were switching to alternative suppliers.

John Tough, a vice president at Choose Energy, a California-based company that offers online tools for energy shoppers, said more people were likely to start shopping around as utility costs rise.

Choose Energy does 5,000 to 6,000 residential enrollments in Pennsylvania each month, Tough said. However, he said portions of Western Pennsylvania have lagged behind the trends because of relatively low and stable energy rates.

That changed earlier this year when state regulators approved distribution rate increases for four regional electricity suppliers. The increases for Penn Power, West Penn Power, Met-Ed and Penelec were the first in decades.

They come along with rising default supply charges that went into effect June 1 and are expected to push some residential customers’ monthly bills over the $100 mark for the first time, according to the Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission.

That’s a significant threshold for most customers, Tough said.

“People expect energy bills to be between $60 and $100, and if it breaks $100, then they start caring,” he said.

Todd Meyers, a spokesman at West Penn Power, where average monthly bills were expected to break the $100 mark, said roughly 25 percent of the company’s residential customers shop for their own electric generation supplier.

The company provides electricity to about 720,000 customers in 24 Pennsylvania counties.

Default supply rates at the company rose 27 percent starting June 1, a monthly increase of nearly $15.

Robin Tilley, a deputy press secretary at the PUC, said the rising default supply rates of electricity in the region are behind a push to get more people in western and southwestern Pennsylvania onto the PUC’s own online energy marketplace.

“We really try to help customers make their own, informed choice,” Tilley said.

But there is disagreement over where customers should shop for their energy plans.

State regulators and third party operations like Choose Energy accuse each other of running flawed services — though both agree that customers should be wary of “game-playing” like low introductory rates.

Meyers pointed to last year’s bitter winter weather, which resulted in spiking costs for people who signed on to variable rate plans thinking they have found cost-saving deals, and instead wound up with outlandish monthly bills.

“Many were caught off guard and exposed to sky high market rate prices,” Meyers said.