Municipalities in the San Francisco Bay area are joining together to form an electric buying group in anticipation of the deregulation of the California electric market. The group, the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), will flex its collective buying power first in natural gas.
The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) has once again refused to grant "blanket approval" of an investment program for natural gas vehicle (NGV) refueling stations proposed by Public Service Electric and Gas Co. (PSE&G).
Boston Edison Co. (BE), the first investor-owned electric utility in the nation to issue a request for proposals to secure options for buying wholesale electricity, now has received bids for more than 4,300 megawatts, with some offers for 1998 priced between three and four cents per kilowatt-hour.
The Maine Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has approved a 2.43 percent rate increase in the price cap for Central Maine Power Co. (CMP). It also issued findings governing the flow-through to ratepayers of savings earned by restructuring contracts with qualifying cogeneration facilities (QFs).
The Virginia State Corporation Commission has approved a new pilot program for a "Standby Generation Control System" proposed by Virginia Electric and Power Co. The system would allow the utility to dispatch customer-owned generators at periods of system peak demand.
San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) has filed comments to support the "majority proposal" by the California Public Utilities Commission on deregulating the electric utility industry, which calls for formation of a wholesale power pool.
SDG&E noted that while a key element of the proposal involved creating an independent system operator, the company would go further and set up a regional transmission company to own the grid.
The North Carolina Utilities Commission (UC)has granted authority to Frontier Utilities of North Carolina, Inc., to construct and operate a new natural gas pipeline and distribution system to provide service to four counties in the state.
executive director of Toward Utility Rate Normalization (TURN), a consumer advocacy group, has asked California Gov. Pete Wilson for the vacant seat on the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has once again turned back an attempt by the Communications Workers of America to invoke state utility regulation to solve labor complaints against Pacific Bell.The union had complained that PacBell's use of lower-paid technicians to perform duties allegedly reserved for higher-paid contract classifications violated the state's public utility code.
