The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) has decided that Bell Atlantic-Pennsylvania, Inc., a local-exchange telephone carrier (LEC), should reduce rates for its residential digital high-speed service offerings. The residential Integrated Service Digital Network (ISDN) service enables users to access and send voice, data, and imaging services at the same time over their telephone lines.
The Michigan Public Service Commission (PSC) has approved a request by Detroit Edison Co., to offer a special discount contract to one of its large industrial customers, MasoTech, Inc. The customer had failed in an earlier attempt to compel the utility to offer transmission service so that it could gain "direct access" to other sources of electric power. See, Re MasoTech Forming Technologies, Inc., 168 PUR4th 142 (Mich.P.S.C.1996).
Stranded Costs Projected at -$2.9B to $22B
The Texas Public Utility Commission (PUC) was scheduled this month to consider estimates of retail competition's impact on electric utilities.
A draft staff report, yet to be reviewed by the PUC, estimates stranded costs that span a high of $22 billion to a low of negative $2.9 billion.
Public Utilities Fortnightly asked eight commissioners about the demands of restructuring and about an issue particular to their state.
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Comments by P.
a decommissioning trust suffers the same vulnerabilities.
a fortunate few, opening up competitive options even
in advance
of 1998.With a fountain pen and a flourish of promises, California Gov.
Early on in the debate, the legislature had signaled the commission that it would need the blessing of lawmakers to pursue its agenda.This past August, during the waning days of a two-year session, the California Legislature unanimously passed a landmark bill to deregulate the state's $23-billion electric utility industry.
The new law, known as "Assembly Bill (AB) 1890, largely reaffirms the broad outlines of the December 1995 Final Policy Decision issued b
Stranded-
Cost
Recovery: All FERC'ed Up
By Michael T. Maloney, Robert E.
McCormick, and Chad A. McGowan
The "lost-revenues" approach in Order 888 ignores the fact that cash flow drives
asset valuation . . .
. . . the key to measuring uneconomic investment.
The California legislature had taken an interest in electric restructuring from early on in the debate. Through policy committees of the Assembly and Senate, it had signaled that the CPUC would need the blessing of the lawmakers before it would be allowed to pursue the ideas spelled out in the commission's Final Policy Decision. Moreover, the December 1995 decision had drawn a divided reaction. Some parties had sought relief from the outcome of the December 1995 order.
About a year ago I stuck my neck out to predict that electric utilities might end up with stranded investment in transmission lines. I suggested that financial commodities trading-longs, shorts, and hedges-might supplant physical product movements. It's happened in natural gas, where the interstate pipelines have suffered from "decontracting" and capacity "turnback"-a phenomenon that has tended to move from West to East.