• FEATURE STORY:  Whatever is going to happen to PUHCA?

• Former Strategic Energy team plans sequel with new company

• Maine may force marketers to get buyers hyped about risks

Former Strategic Energy team plans
sequel with new company

This time they'll own the company

Four members of the senior management of Strategic Energy that helped develop that company into a business with annual revenues of over $1 billion are planning a sequel.
This time they'll own it.
     With their track record, managerial skills, regulatory insights and experience they have reason for confidence in today's business climate that they can duplicate what they did at Strategic.
     Starlight intends focusing on small and medium-sized C&I customers.
     “Many electricity market participants have failed to build successful retail businesses because every state, grid operator and utility has a unique set of rules that govern retail markets,” said Alex Galatic, CEO of Starlight Energy.

Maine may force marketers to
get buyers hyped about risks

The Maine PUC isn't looking just at direct buying from NEPOOL in a probe it opened last week (RT, 8/8).
     It's going to look at its customer protection rule in general and in particular at how suppliers disclose risks to customers.
     Customers signing fixed-price retail contracts assume some risks too, the PUC noted, so it plans to look at whether:
     • Marketers should be required to provide written risk disclosures to customers and/or prospects;
     • Risk disclosures should be required only for real-time products or others as well;

Delaware gets chance to create
vigorous retail market

The pending settlement on the table now though certainly won't get it there.
     That's the view of Select Energy's (Northeast Utilities) Marc Hanks in testimony to the PSC.
     The POLR service plan Delaware's looking at adopts hourly pricing for large C&Is but the number of customers getting those rates should be larger, Select's manager of retail regulatory affairs and market planning said.
     And it needs to come up with a more realistic retail adder -- the extra kwh fee non-shoppers pay that reflects costs shoppers bypass because those costs are taken care of by their competitive suppliers.
     Delaware had decided on a wholesale model for buying POLR supply -- a model common in the Mid-Atlantic (RT, 3/8).
     A retail adder would even the playing field between the wholesale price and retail price marketers charge.
     But the retail adder of 0.6 mills/kwh proposed in the settlement is unrealistic, said Select.

Infinite Energy seeks PSC
OK for better method

Gas marketer Infinite Energy asked the Georgia PSC's OK for a method of verifying customer sign-ups via inbound and outbound telemarketing.
     Infinite uses a system that lets it record the entire sales call and all the information required to prove a sale such as the number called along with the time and date.
     Infinite thinks its system is "practical convenient and fair."
     It uses its own employees -- not hired telemarketers -- to make sales and is "confident there is no possibility of deceptive marketing."