The New York Public Service Commission has adopted eligibility criteria rules for competitive retail energy services companies (ESCOs) seeking to sell electricity in the state.

The state created the March 5 ESCO rules as part of New York's "Competitive Opportunities" proceeding. The rules are consistent with the PSC's May 16, 1996 decision to open markets to wholesale competition in 1997 and to retail competition in 1998. Consumer protections used in the present monopoly environment will be retained during the transition to competition.

Investor-owned utilities in Pennsylvania have filed their retail electric competition plans with the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission to comply with recent legislation requiring customer-choice pilots for 5 percent of the peak load of the state's electric utilities.

PECO Energy Co. has filed a proposed electric choice retail pilot program that would allow about 90,000 residential, commercial and industrial customers to choose their electric suppliers as soon as October and no later than January 1998.

Arizona Public Service Co. has filed a lawsuit in the Superior Court of Maricopa County to challenge rules adopted by the Arizona Corporation Commission in December 1996 to open the state's electric industry to competition over a four-year period starting in 1999.

Public Service Electric & Gas Co. has asked the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities to impose mandatory environmental disclosure requirements on all power providers who wish to compete in the state's market.

Specifically, the utility wants an environmental consumer protection standard requiring all sellers planning to compete in New Jersey periodically to disclose their system-wide emission rates or that of the source from which power is produced.

A new report found advances in distributed electric generation, noting a pronounced shift since the early 1990s toward on-site generation, as electronic control systems now allow for remote dispatching, and combustion turbine engines are smaller, more powerful and offer increased energy efficiency.

North American Distributed Generation System Markets, produced by Frost & Sullivan, said that the Clean Air Act of 1972, and subsequent amendments made over the last 25 years, have influenced technologies.

The Palm Springs City Council has approved a contract with Portland General Corp., the parent company of Portland General Electric, which specifies the roles and responsibilities of both parties as the city establishes a new utility, "City of Palm Springs Energy Services."

Last December, Palm Springs had selected Portland General to become the city's new energy services partner to help it develop a municipal utility to compete in a deregulated marketplace.

Oglethorpe Power Corp. recently completed an extensive restructuring that transformed the generation and transmission power cooperative into three specialized companies better able to compete in a restructured electric market.

In addition, the company's board of directors has approved a deal that would allow Morgan Stanley Capital Group to supply Oglethorpe Power Co. one-half of its power needs for up to eight years. The deal has been presented to the 39 Electric Membership Corporations (EMCs) for final approval.

Do electric utilities understand how to earn profits for shareholders in a competitive market?

Here's one way to look at the problem. Gather a group of financial experts and ask this question: If a company's long-term bonds are rated AA, and yield 8 percent, what minimum return would you require from dividend yield and price appreciation to induce you to buy that company's stock?

The typical expert will say 12 percent, indicating a 4-percent premium (or spread) above AA bond yields.

Loyalty may depend more on age group than anything else.

Utilities may want to start asking their customers some personal questions.

Such as: "How old are you?"

Why? Because customer behavior may have more to do with age and other demographics than anything. For instance, younger customers compose the highest-switching segment. However, older customers tend to have more loyalty. But so too, these loyal customers are the hardest to woo from another supplier.

Calling a proposed Securities and Exchange Commission rule contrary to public policy and law, as well as a "de facto repeal of major provisions of the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935," the City Council of New Orleans has asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to withdraw its proposed Rule 58.

"For more than 60 years, PUHCA has shed light on the activities of utility holding companies," said Council President James M. Singleton.