The Illinois Commerce Commission prepared a report to the General Assembly based on the information the electric utilities provided regarding the transition to a competitive electric industry. The Report includes the following eleven topics: (1) Number of Customers Switching and Transition Charge Recovery; (2) Utility Cost Mitigation Activities; (3) Depreciation Rate Changes, Mergers, UFAC Elimination and Rate Reductions; (4) Use of Transitional Funding Instruments (Securitization); (5) Revenue and Consumption Statistics; (6) Adjusted Revenue and Consumption Statistics; (7) Utility Revenue and Income; (8) Generating Plant Sales to Non-Affiliates; (9) Plant Sales or Transfers to Affiliates; (10) Plant Sales or Transfers by Affiliates to Non-Affiliates; (11) Reporting of Transmission and Distribution Expenditures.

The report stated that the total number of customers in 2002 that have requested delivery service is 23,459. The report also stated that the amount of usage that switched to delivery service over the period from October 1, 1999 through December 31, 2002 was 67,301 million KWh. The full text of the Report is available on the NEM Website.

Columbia Gas has filed a request for early termination of its gas choice program on March 31, 2004. The program was scheduled to conclude on October 31, 2004. Columbia argues that the pilot program should be terminated because: 1) "in the aggregate customers are not saving money;" 2) Columbia would likely incur "substantial" stranded costs if the program were to run beyond March 31, 2004; 3) due to the workings of storage contracts, March 31, 2004, is the logical time to conclude the program. Columbia further requests: 1) to limit marketer participation in the program to the existing participants; 2) to no longer make customer lists available to marketers; and 3) to educate customers about the termination of the program.

NEM Member Interstate Gas Supply (IGS) has filed a petition to institute the program on a permanent basis. IGS argues the program should be continued because it has provided consumers with an opportunity for savings as well as the opportunity to choose from a variety of rate options. Customers also should not be penalized because Columbia's business decision to utilize an incentive-based stranded cost mitigation scheme has not been as lucrative as expected. The success of the program is evident in the 33% switching rate achieved. NEM will intervene and actively participate in this proceeding. Members interested in participating should contact headquarters. The full texts of Columbia's Motion and IGS' Petition are available on the NEM Website.

The Department opened an inquiry into the use of the New England Generation Information System (NE-GIS) for the purposes of complying with the Department’s Information Disclosure Requirements. The Department’s regulations require that each competitive supplier provide its customers an information disclosure label containing the price, fuel source, emissions, and labor characteristics of the supplier’s generation resource portfolio. Competitive suppliers are required to update the information presented on their disclosure labels on a quarterly basis, using market settlement data or equivalent data provided by the Independent System Operator for the most recent one-year period. The Department is requesting comments on whether it should direct licensed competitive suppliers in Massachusetts to use NE-GIS as the sole basis for the fuel source, emissions, and labor information included on disclosure labels. NE-GIS establishes a two-month trading period for each quarter, and produces a report for each supplier at the end of the trading period. The Department proposes that each supplier be required to update its information disclosure label during October 2003 to include information from its GIS report for the first quarter of 2003. Afterwards, each supplier would update its label quarterly. Comments on the proposal to require competitive suppliers to use NE-GIS are due July 9, 2003.

The Department will hold a Technical Conference to discuss issues associated with the Information Disclosure Requirements on July 2, 2003. The technical session will be divided into two portions. The topic of discussion for the first portion will be the Department’s proposal to direct competitive suppliers to use NE-GIS as the sole basis for the fuel source, emissions, and labor information included on their disclosure labels. The topic of discussion for the second portion of the technical session will be revisions the Department could make to our Information Disclosure Requirements to increase the usefulness of the disclosure labels to retail customers, in anticipation of a rulemaking the Department may open to revise our regulations on these issues. The full text of the Department Order Opening Inquiry is available on the NEM Website. Please send your comments to Headquarters as soon as possible.

The Board adopted a procedure and rate design for procuring of the remaining supplies necessary to serve BGS customers for Year Two of the post-Transition Period (June 1, 2004 though May 31, 2005) and beyond. The process and schedule adopted is similar to that adopted for Year Four of the Transition Period (August 1, 2002 - July 31, 2003) and Year One of the post-Transition Period (August 1, 2003 - May 31, 2004). The schedule will result in a Board decision in late September 2003 on the process to be followed for procurement of Year Two BGS and will result in the award of supply contracts in February 2004. The beginning of the supply year has been changed to June 1 rather than August 1. The Board directed the electric distribution companies to file proposals addressing how to procure BGS for Year Two and beyond by July 1, 2003.

Additionally, the Board adopted the following preliminary procedural schedule: July 1, 2003: Filing of Electric Distribution Company’s (EDCs) Proposal; August 8, 2003: Deadline for alternate proposals/initial comments on EDC proposals; September 9, 2003: Deadline for Final Comments; September 24, 2003: Expected Board decision on BGS proposals; October 1, 2003: EDC Compliance Filing; October 8, 2003: Expected Board decision on Compliance Filing. The full text of the Board Order is available on the NEM Website.

The Commission voted to implement new HEFPA provisions requiring ESCOs to provide consumer protections to customers and granting ESCOs the right of termination. The Commission approved measures to: 1) require pro-ration of payments on consolidated bills between ESCO and utility charges, first to past due charges and then to current charges; 2) grant ESCOs the right to terminate service for nonpayment; 3) recognize that ESCOs are eligible to receive social service payments for eligible customers; 4) require ESCOs to offer a budget billing option and deferred payment agreements; 5) prohibit ESCOs from requiring security deposits; and 6) limit late payment charges on unpaid balances to no more than 18% per year, or 1.5% monthly. The Commission will next issue draft rules for comment, conduct collaborative meetings, and convene a technical conference for receipt of input on the draft rules. The full text of the Commission's Order and details of future steps will be posted on the NEM Website when made available electronically. Many thanks to NEM members for their leadership and support on these important issues and a special thanks to Bill Kinneary for his leadership on the pro ration issue.

The NYPSC set the scope and schedule of the proceeding to investigate potential electric delivery rate disincentives against the promotion of energy efficiency, renewable technologies and distributed generation. The NYPSC ordered the utilities to provide a detailed "typical bill" analysis by September 8, 2003. The analyses must be in a format that will permit comparison with the results presented in Niagara Mohawk's November 15, 2002, "Report on Environmental Collaborative". Comments are due October 10, 2003, and may focus on the significance of typical bill analysis in view of competing assumptions about such factors as avoided costs, time-of-day rates, transmission revenues, or other pertinent considerations. Comments should also address incentives or disincentives utilities may have to promote distributed generation (DG) or energy efficiency (EE) as well as the utilities role in the market place for DG and EE. The full text of the ALJ's letter on the Schedule and Scope of this proceeding is available on the NEM Website.

DVP has revised parts of its proposed Pilot Programs. A summary of the changes is as follows: (1) DVP has agreed to an extension of the wires charges reduction term. The end of the Pilot Programs will now be upon the expiration or termination of capped rates with an opportunity, two years into the Pilot Programs, to make modifications to address unsuccessful aspects of the Programs; (2) The Default Supply Service Pilot name has been changed to the Competitive Bid Supply Service Pilot; (3) The Competitive Bid Supply Service Pilot blocks will now be based on three geographic areas; (4) The bidding process for the Competitive Bid Supply Service Pilot has changed. In the filing, DVP specified that once the winning CSP for each block had been determined, the higher of the class specific price of the four winning bids for the blocks would be used to establish the market price for that class for all four blocks. This has been deleted from the Terms and Conditions; the winning bid will now be that CSP offer that wins the bid for a geographic block, which will be the lowest weighted average bid; (5) DVP has committed to complete an initial screening for savings for those customers eligible to participate in the Competitive Bid Supply Service Pilot. The Company will not randomly assign any customer if their individual Pilot Price-to-Compare is less than the class-average price offered by the CSP.

Additionally, DVP has offered to consider an increase in the wires charge reduction with a corresponding decrease in the size of the Pilots in the event that the 50% wires charge reduction appears to be insufficient to stimulate activity in the Pilot Programs. The full text of the revised Terms and Conditions for the three Pilot Programs is available on the NEM Website. DVP will file the revised Terms and Conditions by June 25, 2003.