The "duty to connect" demands definition - such as the optimal investment in local wires, and who should pay for it.
As the electric utility industry continues its slow but inexorable transformation into a more "competitive" industry, there has been a notable absence of discussion concerning continued regulation of local distribution utilities, or discos.
PUCs turn their attention to what they can still control.
The battleground has shifted. Utilities that last year worried about winning customers in pilot programs for retail choice now face public audits on the reliability of transmission and distribution.
With rate cases in remission, no nukes on order and generation planning left to the market, public utility commissions are turning their attention to what they can still regulate. That means service quality. Nor are PUCs the only ones involved.
The state foots the bill, while northern neighbors profit from a managed power market.
California's electric restructuring plan, launched on April 1, 1998, marks one of the most ambitious attempts in U.S. history to place the state in a social engineering role. Not only was the scale of the project daunting, with implementation cost estimates running as high as $1.2 billion, but the plan places California government in control of the most minute components of the electric system.
How has the experiment gone?
Co-ops beat utility rates in 15 states. But why not more?
Despite the fact that their customers are scattered throughout the most remote reaches of the 46 U.S. states they service, electrical cooperatives in 15 states offer residential rates lower than the averages for all utilities in those states.
A comparison of 1997 rates by the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association finds that another 24 states have rates that are just 1 to 10 percent higher than the utilities' state averages.
Northeast states avoid meter squabbles, stress electronic commerce.
It ain't the chip, it's the interface. That's the ticket in New England and the Northeast, where utilities, power producers, retailers and marketers are standardizing electronic data transfers of customer lists, enrollment choices, energy consumption and billing determinants - the business information that will be prove essential to a working competitive market in electricity.
Washington State Studies Electric Competition
Meeting its Dec. 31 deadline, the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission delivered to the state legislature its "Electricity System Study 6560", a joint effort with the state Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development (CTED) as required by Engrossed Substitute Senate Bill 6560, on retail electrical consumer protection.
Eight states blame upwind sources. Agency to revisit emissions targets.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Sept. 24 rule for 22 eastern states to file plans to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions would ostensibly reduce transport of ground-level ozone, or smog, in so-called "nonattainment areas." But eight of these affected states have filed petitions arguing that NOx emissions blowing in from nearby jurisdictions must be controlled before they can comply.
So far, in preliminary statements, the EPA has indicated that at least some of these petitions have merit.
The FERC didn't say, but honest lawyers want to know.
December was a grim month for those wanting the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to further define the limits of a "sham transaction," as that idea is understood under the Federal Power Act, which dictates when an electric utility must offer transmission services to power producers, marketers or other utilities.fn1 Of the three cases concerning this issue that were pending before the FERC on the first day of the month, all were resolved. But none was explained.
One case was simply withdrawn.
Studies and Reports
Natural Gas Retail Choice. Utility affiliates hold large market shares in natural gas customer choice programs, raising questions about the extent of true competition, according to a study released on Dec. 15 by the U.S. General Accounting Office. Participation varies by region, however, according to the report, "Energy Deregulation - Status of Natural Gas Customer Choice Programs."
In Pennsylvania, for example, three out of four programs showed very high shares for utility affiliates. The Equitable Gas Co.