Shopping credits, capacity rules and other mistakes from California and PJM.
With retail electric markets opening rapidly, why are so many getting off to a slow start? Why do suppliers abandon some markets and consumers decline to participate in others? The answer may lie in a series of disconnections between wholesale trading patterns and retail opportunities.
Let customers choose their own billing format.
The information-management and transaction-cost problems facing deregulated markets are familiar to me. They describe precisely the same barriers I was trying to overcome when I founded Utility.com Inc., an entirely Internet-based energy service provider.
The Internet offers an especially powerful tool for customer service. With deregulation, customers face an enormous learning curve. Not only can they now choose their electric company, but they also must become familiar with new terminology and concepts.
The crazy quilt emerging in restructured markets only impedes competition.
The enthusiasm among energy retailers has become infectious. It grows as each successive state opens its market to competition. Yet behind the promise lies a grim reality.
Retailers struggle against a tide of thin margins, high customer-acquisition costs, inconsistent rules and regulatory prescriptions for the unregulated market. With all the rulemakings and workshops, the dollars budgeted by utilities to implement retail choice rise above even the level of spending to eradicate the Y2K millennium bug.
No, but you're doing more in fewer hours.
While utilities continue to pare staff to skeletal levels, the latest labor statistics indicate that employees, though increasingly more productive, are working fewer hours per week.
A comparison of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' December 1997 and preliminary December 1998 statistics indicate that while staff levels continued to decline at electric, gas and sanitary utilities, employees who remain are working 2 percent fewer hours per week.
But preference customers still remain a "vocal political force."
With eyes turned again toward Congress, and possible energy legislation, opponents have thrown up yet another challenge to the sale of low-cost, allegedly subsidized power by the federal power marketing administrations. This time, congressional foes of PMAs have gained allies in several investor-owned utilities and in the findings of a report from the U.S. General Accounting Office, requested last year by Congress to aid its deliberations on electric restructuring.
New PRC might revisit PUC orders. By Bruce W. Radford
"The PRC has not necessarily decided what position it will take," said PRC counsel Stacy Goodwin.
"I believe the majority of the PRC will take a slightly different position than the PUC, but there are some legal questions," confirmed Lynda Lovejoy, the newly elected chairman of the Public Regulation Commission.
Studies & Reports
Year 2000 Readiness. On Jan. 11 the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) predicted a minimal effect on electric system operations from Y2K software problems. The Department of Energy, which had asked NERC to run the electric industry assessment, added that 98 percent of U.S.
Bob Rowe of the Montana Public Service Commission was elected first vice president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. Rowe will continue to serve as chairman of the NARUC Telecommunications Committee for another year.
Duane, Morris & Heckscher LLP added Regina Speed-Bost to its energy group. Speed-Bost is the former legal advisor for natural gas and oil pipeline matters to William L. Massey, commissioner, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Charles K.
The wires business goes up for grabs as California opens its landmark case on distributed generation.
Jay Morse has studied distributed generation for the past seven years. Today, as an engineer and policy analyst on regulatory transition and market development issues for the California PUC's Office of Ratepayer Advocates, he sits in the eye of the storm. Technology is busting out all over, says Morse, who calls himself the "godfather" of DG in California's electric restructuring.