As marketers discover, some LDCs keep a strong grip on the residential class.

Michael Meath of Agway Energy Products has a dream. A dream to tap the 4.5 million natural gas customers in New York State, supplying commodity and then, other services.

New York state unbundled gas rates in March 1996, with new tariffs approved later that year. Since then, just 11,000 customers out of 4.5 million (em less than half a percent (em have decided to use aggregated transportation service.

Not all New York utilities have filed customer aggregation programs, however.

Follow the arrows as California's direct access workshops map out who will have access to electric customer data.

In its latest order implementing direct access for electric customers, the California Public Utilities Commission told Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas & Electric to conduct workshops to recommend rules on the release of customer information in a deregulated electric industry.

The PUC offered guidelines.

The Idaho Public Utilities Commission has rejected a request by Intermountain Gas Co. to cut demand-side management and conservation requirements from its integrated resource planning guidelines, despite company claims that reforms were needed to align the planning process with current business practices.

Meanwhile, the Florida Public Service Commission has authorized Florida Power and Light Co. to terminate an existing research and development program for a new gas-driven technology.

Idaho.

Responding to directives from its Legislature, the Maine Public Utilities Commission has directed local-exchange telephone carriers to lower their per-minute, common-line charge by 20 percent, but without changing the access charge rate structure.

At the same time, it rejected a proposal by New England Telephone and Telegraph Co. to adjust the local carrier's recently approved price-cap plan to reflect a predicted erosion in revenues. The PUC found no evidence that a cut in access rates would depress local carrier revenues.

The New York Public Service Commission has authorized Niagara Mohawk Power Corp., to set up an emissions reduction credit pool to assist economic development efforts in the state.

It also approved the utility's plan to fund the pool with more than $700,000 of existing deferred credits owed to ratepayers from previous sales of sulfur-dioxide allowances.

The company plans to sell the credits at market value and as part of special discount electric service tariff offerings.

Unexpected price increases for natural gas during the past winter heating season have stimulated action by state regulators across the country. Most recently, North Carolina and New Mexico have approved changes in adjustment clause and billing rules to temper the effect on consumers.

North Carolina. The North Carolina Utilities Commission opened a generic proceeding to consider shortening the notice period required for changes to benchmark natural gas commodity rates by local distribution companies.

The New York Public Service Commission has asserted authority to mandate direct-access pilot programs to give supply choice to energy consumers, noting that state authority is crucial to filling a regulatory "vacuum," since the Federal Power Act withholds authority from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to mandate retail wheeling.

The case involved a pilot program developed by Dairylea Cooperative Inc.

The Colorado Public Utilities Commission is expanding its investigation into the unbundling of natural gas local distribution services and rates.

The staff investigation follows a report on gas industry restructuring to the state Legislature by Hagler Bailly, a consulting firm, and a commission hearing on the report. According to the commission, this "next step" in the review process is designed to solicit further input from stakeholders and to refine the issues into an unbundling framework.

The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities has authorized Public Service Electric and Gas Co. to extend its existing economic development programs through July 1999.

The programs include construction and building credits for non-residential consumers who expand into newly leased or purchased vacant building space and increase their electric or gas energy use as a result. The program also includes an electric, off-peak employment service for non-residential customers that increase consumption of off-peak electricity as a result of increased employment levels.

U.S. District Court in New Hampshire has denied a move by customers and ratepayer groups to intervene in litigation on electric restructuring simply on the basis that they wanted lower rates.

The court said that a general desire to pay lower rates was not specific enough to intervene in the lawsuit, which was filed by several large electric utilities to challenge elements of the plan for competition approved in February by the state Public Utilities Commission. See, Re Restructuring New Hampshire's Electric Utility Industry, Order No. 22,514, 175 PUR4th 193 (N.H.P.U.C.).