• FEATURE STORY:  Sarbanes-Oxley propels World Energy into big time

• Alternative to Grid West advances in Portland

Alternative to Grid West advances in Portland

When the Northwest Power & Conservation Council (NPCC) gets together, the fish people meet separately from the power people.
     Then they get together and share views.
     The power people were briefed in Portland, Ore, about an alternate group that may be coming together to help deal with Northwestern fears of FERC.
     Briefing was by Wally Gibson who manages system analysis and generation for NPCC.
     He told of the TIG website.
     TIG is the Transition Improvements Group (RT, 3/28) ...

Large marketer has ideas for
livening up Virginia market

Setting a market-based default rate was Constellation NewEnergy’s idea of how to spark shopping in the state’s hopelessly stagnant retail market.
     The nation’s biggest retail power marketer urged moving large C&Is to market-based rates in July 2007 instead of rates now capped through 2010.
     Once Dominion Virginia Power moves into PJM the wholesale market would be competitive, Constellation reminded.
     The State Corporation Commission staff sees a chicken/egg problem in its annual competition report to state lawmakers.
     Virginia law requires the market to be competitive before capped rates may end, the staff reminded ...

Regulators look at markets
but all don't see beauty

Policymakers in Ohio, New York, New Jersey and California revealed in April very different priorities for their retail markets.
      Speaking at NEMA’s national meeting, only one, New York PSC Commissioner Leonard Weiss, professed a belief in the value of choice.
      One of the primary objectives of the PSC is to “provide greater customer choice,” Weiss said, equating more choice with greater value.
      Customers have choices now “unheard of” just a few years ago, he noted, listing renewable power, efficiency programs and equipment service linked to supply.
      It’s not just prices, he said, because the ability to choose itself adds value ...

Markets advocate sees NY power
shopping at 45% by `07

Ron Cerniglia admits he’s going way out on a limb predicting shopping will grow from 7% now to 45% by the end of next year in the state's mass market.
     But he’s reassured by what he sees as amazing progress in competitive markets.
Cerniglia has 35 employees as director of the PSC office of retail market development.
     He told NEM that the state’s move toward full competition is the goal and the right direction.
     Decisions have been issued in profusion recently -- new hourly pricing for large users at Central Hudson, Consolidated Edison’s new shopping plan and a new flex-rate rule that puts marketers on an even playing field with utilities in negotiating special rates with economic development customers ...

How did O&R get such a good
open markets system?

Where did New York’s leading open-access utility get the idea for the revolutionary retail shopping program that’s now the PSC’s model for all to emulate?
     A guy in the accounting office came up with it, John McMahon, president of Orange & Rockland, told NEMA members.
     He “knew where the levers were.”
     But it took a guy like McMahon to say OK -- someone who sees the opportunity for creativity in the utility business and appreciates “outside-the-box thinking.”
     O&R was the right place to do it, he explained, being not too big and not too small ...

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