|
• Just
Energy knows how to grow at 5-10%/month in Texas
• PANEL:
Volatility `crucial` to energy market health
• Suez
went after thin margins first for a reason
• Paul
Thomas doesn't pursue scale at Green Mountain
Cirro
to open free-standing
retail power store in Texas
Cirro
Energy and its authorized agent Texstar Power Brokerage are bringing
storefronts to Texas's retail power market.
The state's first free-standing retail
power store is officially to open in San Angelo Aug 16.
San Angelo is part of the tri-city area
with Midland and Odessa.
Customers will enjoy the same ease in buying
power that they do for cell phones and pagers, said Tim Bell, Cirro
executive vice president ...
ADVERTISEMENT
Last
chance to register: The Outlook for the Texas
Mass Market
Audio Conference (8/17)
Don't
miss this chance to ask these experts your questions about
what's up ahead in the big Texas market ...
Chairman Paul Hudson of the Texas PUC
Senior Vice President of Consumer Markets Jim Burke
from TXU Energy
Gexa
Energy Founder Neil Leibman
Visit www.restructuringtoday.com/conferences/texas-mass.html
for details and to register. |
National
Grid weighing O&R retail
model in Massachusetts
National
Grid -- whose parent firm in the UK has had lots of experience
with advanced competitive markets -- has told Massachusetts regulators
it may be willing to adopt a PowerSwitch-like retail program.
PowerSwitch is Orange &
Rockland Utilities' successful program to encourage New York small
customers to shop.
New York regulators consider
it a "best practice" and urged other utilities to adopt
it.
National Grid's Niagara Mohawk
proposed one of the better retail access plans to boost its competitive
market.
As Massachusetts crafts a new plan
for POLR service, marketers have urged the Dept of Telecommunications
& Energy (DTE) to do the same ...
Pepco
urges Maryland to
update gas market now
Maryland's
competitive retail gas market is "ripe for revision,"
Pepco Energy Services told the PSC in comments on new rules proposed
for gas and power shopping.
The state's gas markets developed
piecemeal over 20 years unlike power markets that were opened
by legislation, PES pointed out, and the result is market rules
that vary by utility and customer class.
It's a "hodgepodge of regulations,"
PES noted, that "is not user friendly" for competitive
suppliers ...
Just
Energy knows how to grow
at 5-10%/month in Texas
The
firm has doubled each year. Yet the firm and its rivals face narrowing
margins, CEO Scott Gahn noted Friday at Infocon's Power Industry
Forum in Washington.
A firm will look profitable
on paper when margins fall below $10/mwh, but the sales don’t
generate enough cash for survival without added financing, he
said.
The firm has about 10,000
customers in Texas bringing in nearly $38 million/year in revenue.
A positive cash flow is directly
tied to switch rates, he said. Gahn believes to get switch rates
up, Texas retailers need third-party capital infusions ...
PANEL:
Volatility `crucial`
to energy market health
Retailers
need continual opportunities to recapture margin, said Gahn (above)
at Infocon's Power Industry Forum Friday.
In markets that suffer from regulated
stability, margins have shrunk nearly to zero, he reminded.
But exposing customers to volatility
is “absolutely unacceptable” to regulators.
True volatility that can occur in
a free market will never be allowed in Texas or anywhere else,
Gahn said.
Market designs demand that power
products be devised to “insulate” the consumer from
undue volatility ...
Suez
went after thin margins first for a reason
Suez
Energy Resources (formerly Tractebel) believes the only way to
create customer inertia -- keeping them from slipping away to
competitors.
They can make money while
expanding by focusing on large C&Is using 50 mw or more then
build on that success by serving smaller C&Is in measured
steps.
It's the economies of scale that
are important to Suez, CEO Zin Smati told the Infocast's 11th
Annual Power Industry Forum in Washington Friday ...
Paul
Thomas doesn't pursue
scale at Green Mountain
Scale
may be important for Suez (above), but not Green Mountain Energy.
Once it mattered “but we wasted
a lot of money chasing revenue growth” before shifting focus
to creating bottom-line profits, reported CEO Paul Thomas at Infocast's
Power Industry Forum.
That strategy paid off last year when
Green Mountain posted a profit for the first time ever.
As part of its market-entry policy, the
firm looks for a market with competitive activity as opposed to
just entering a so-called competitive market ...
Copyright
2005, ghi, llc. All rights reserved. |
