Fortnightly Magazine - March 1 1996

"market-based" electric tariff for Fitchburg Gas & Electric Co., a combined electric and gas utility. The "Energy Bank Service" for new or expanding industrial customers offers rates competitive with average U.S. industrial rates.

After well over a decade, the Kentucky Public Service Commission (PSC) has finally concluded a long-standing dispute governing rate treatment for Louisville Gas & Electric's investment in the Trimble County generating facility. In 1989, the PSC disallowed 25 percent of the 495-megawatt coal-fired plant from rate base. Under the newly approved agreement, the utility will refund current customers $22 million: $5.3 million is reserved to special contract customers, and the balance will be refunded to all other customers through a per-kilowatt-hour credit over a five-year period.

Bucking the current trend among state utility regulators, the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission (URC) has denied a request by Northern Indiana Public Service Co., a natural gas local distribution company (LDC), to retain a portion of the revenues it receives from pipeline capacity-release transactions. The LDC asked the URC to permit shareholders to retain 50 percent of the revenues gained from participation in the "secondary market" for interstate pipeline capacity instead of flowing them back to ratepayers through the quarterly gas-cost adjustment (GCA) mechanism.

The New York Public Service Commission (PSC) has ordered New York Telephone Co., a telecommunications local exchange carrier (LEC), to notify customers that they may now choose an alternative carrier for intraLATA toll calling. Interexchange carriers (IXCs) in the state had complained about the LEC's plans to implement a recent PSC order requiring equal access for intraLATA toll services.