In reference to your May 15 article, "Report Finds Problems With Choice Pilot" ("Headlines," p. 16), following is the industrial customers' response to the report.
STATEMENT
On May 7, 1997, a group of large industrial consumers of electricity on the Illinois Power Co. system, referred to as the Illinois Industrial Energy Consumers, filed a response to a recently submitted report by Illinois Power Co., pertaining to the Direct Energy Access (DEAS) report. The DEAS, approved by the Illinois Commerce Commission on March 15, 1996, is an experimental retail wheeling program available to large industrial customers of Illinois Power Co. IP was required by the Illinois Commerce Commission to submit a periodic report, and did so nine months into the experiment.
IP's characterization as to the success of the report was less than glowing, and at odds with the opinion of a majority of the participants in the DEAS experiment. The IIEC was compelled to respond to what they termed "IP's varying characterization as to the success of the DEAS program, and of lessons learned."