News Digest

 

State PUCs

Retail Marketing Credits. As the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission pondered remedies for volatility in California's wholesale power markets, the state PUC was considering how much the state's three major investor-owned electric distribution utilities (UDCs) must spend on power supply procurement and retail marketing for the benefit of their standard-offer default customers, and thus how much to add to the "PX Credit" that is subtracted from bundled rates to determine the wires-only charge that UDCs assess to customers that choose a competitive retailer for generation supply.

As of late November, three proposed decisions were pending before the full commission, one issued by Administrative Law Judge Robert Barnett (with lower credits more favorable to UDCs), two more issued by Commissioners Josiah Neeper and Richard A. Bilas (with credits as much as five times higher, and thus more favorable to competitive retailers). Each decision would assess credits higher than proposed by the three UDCs-Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), Southern California Edison (SCE), and San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E)-but lower than suggested by the Office of Ratepayer Advocates (ORA) or the Alliance for Retail Markets (ARM)....