The Virginia State Corporation Commission (SCC) has initiated an investigation of electric industry restructuring and emerging competition. The SCC stressed that Virginia is not saddled with high-cost power, and that larger electric utilities in the state currently provide service at rates "significantly below" the national average. Nevertheless, the SCC concluded that a formal investigation was necessary to determine whether regulatory improvements might result in reliable service at lower costs for state consumers.

The Florida Public Service Commission (PSC) has ruled that Gulf Power Co. may record a revenue shortfall associated with its experimental real-time pricing program "above the line" in determining current earnings under a rate agreement capping company profits at a 12.7-percent return on equity. The program permits Gulf Power to price services for large industrial customers to reflect lower costs associated with offpeak usage.

The Maine Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has authorized Bangor Hydro-Electric Co. to enter into oil price-swap and price-cap transactions. The utility said that the since the PUC had eliminated its fuel adjustment clause in an earlier proceeding, it had sought ways to reduce the risk associated with fuel price changes. The oil "price hedges," seek to set Bangor's future cost of oil by requiring the parties to pay a settlement amount if the actual price, as published by a well-recognized source, should vary from the price contained in the agreement.

The Idaho Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has approved the merger of Washington Water Power Co. with Sierra Pacific Power Co. and its corporate parent, Sierra Pacific Resources. Pursuant to the terms of the merger agreement, the surviving entity will become Resources West Energy Corp., a Nevada corporation authorized to conduct business in Nevada, Washington, Oregon, California, and Idaho.The utilities estimate that the merger will save ratepayers $514 million over a 10-year period, with nearly half the savings attributable to reductions and alterations in workforce.

State regulators continue to update methods of pricing telecommunications services, using price caps for local exchange carriers (LECs) while expanding existing pricing flexibility for interexchange carriers (IXCs). The emerging trend toward inviting competitors to serve the local market, including basic local exchange service, also continues. Some of the activity mirrors ongoing developments at the federal level, such as major regulatory reforms under debate in the Congress and court-supervised modifications to existing service restrictions stemming from the AT&T divestiture.

The Virginia State Corporation Commission (SCC) has approved a plan by two natural gas local distribution companies (LDCs), Washington Gas Light Co. and Delmarva Power and Light Co., to join with other regional LDCs to form a cooperative to provide for the coordination and use of common capacity, storage, transportation, and supply assets. According to the LDCs, the East Coast Natural Gas Cooperative was a necessary response to recent changes in the gas industry, which shifted responsibility for arranging gas supplies from interstate pipelines to LDCs.

In electric power, telecommunications, water, and natural gas, the costs of local distribution make up a significant share of the cost of providing services. For any network or system, the cost of distribution facilities is largely or entirely independent on usage; i.e., such costs are largely invariant to the number of phone calls, kilowatts, British thermal units (BTUs), or gallons that customers use.

The costs of providing telephone service to rural America are much higher than for more urban areas of the country. By definition, small rural subscribers are scattered throughout large geographic areas. In rural areas, the average number of subscribers per route mile runs about 6.3; the average number of subscribers per square mile is 4.4.

Twenty-five centuries ago, 300 steadfast Spartans, defending their sacred Greek turf, held up Xerxes's Persian army at the pass at Thermopylae just long enough for the Persians to lose the opportunity to conquer Greece. The world would have been quite different if the Spartans had just "given way."Contemporary state public utility regulators number just about that of those plucky Spartans.