The Commission will hold a status conference on March 4, 2002, at 9:30AM to discuss the status of retail choice with respect to BGE's Schedule P customers for whom Standard Offer Service will no longer be available as of June 30, 2002. The Commission is interested in information about logistics of customer enrollment, if competitive offers are being made to these customers, and what will happen to customers that do not choose a new supplier before SOS expires. The full text of the Notice of Status Conference is available on the NEM Website.

At the second retail energy imbalance meeting, a supplier proposal was presented for a retail imbalance program. It was based on the program initially proposed by large industrial customers in the open access tariff cases. Under the plan, an individual supplier's imbalance would usually be settled at the utility's Top Incremental Cost ("TIC"). In some cases, imbalances would be settled as follows: 1) for undersupplies the supplier would pay 110% of the utility's TIC; and 2) for oversupplies the supplier would be paid 90% of the utility's TIC. These penalties, however, would only apply when the total AES (Alternate Energy Supplier) aggregated load is outside of a certain deviation band. Further, it only would apply to AESs who are in an imbalance in the same direction as the aggregate imbalance. Finally, individual AESs also would get a deviation band. The deviation bands would start out at 10% or 6MW in 2002 and shrink to 6% or 4 MW by 2006, to reflect increased scheduling sophistication of AESs.

The utilities response is due March 7, 2002. A third meeting will be held on March 11, 2002. Open questions to address include MISO's willingness to administer a retail energy imbalance program and what is a truly "cost based" penalty. The full text of the Retail Energy Imbalance Proposal is available on the NEM Website.

Detroit Edison will hold a workshop on March 21, 2002, at 7:30AM on its electric choice program. The agenda for the meeting includes a program overview, supplier qualification, customer metering, load profiling and load leading, customer enrollment, customer billing, current and future marketer billing and energy tagging. Registrations are due by March 14, 2002. In order to view the agenda and to register go to http://www.suppliers.detroitedison.com/internet/supplierworkshop.jsp.

NEM submitted comments on the competitive provision of Basic Generation Service (BGS). NEM recommended that competitive BGS should be priced to reflect the full energy supply and commercial costs of serving retail load and that the pricing mechanism must flexible to account for changing market conditions. NEM recommended that if the Board and political demands require assurance of extra reliability that such a requirement should be included in the RFP for the service. NEM cautioned that if the Board limited ratepayers exposure to market-based BGS rate increases that it would send false price signals and that consumers must be able to see and respond to price signals by modifying their consumption or choosing a lower-priced competitive provider. The full text of NEM's Comments are available on the NEM Website.

NEM submitted reply comments in the unbundling proceeding reiterating that unbundled rates should be based on the utilities' embedded costs and not long run avoided costs. NEM argued that the utilities proposed transition cost recovery method should be rejected and that stranded costs should be recovered after-the-fact on a competitively neutral basis in distribution rates. NEM also urged that the Commission must require that unbundled rate information for competitive and potentially competitive products, services, information and technologies must be provided on a line item basis to provide consumers with an adequate basis for comparison when they shop. The full text of NEM's Comments are available on the NEM Website.

Staff submitted reply comments arguing that lost revenues should be collected on an after-the-fact basis and in a non-bypassable charge imposed on all customers. Staff repeated its recommendation that long run incremental cost studies should not be attempted until after embedded cost-based rates are in effect. Staff also recommended that research be conducted to gather consumer input on presentation of information on bills. The full text of Staff's Brief is available on the NEM Website.

Staff issued a Report setting forth proposed rules for competitive electricity metering. The rules address access to interval meter data by customers and competitive service providers and require that utilities offer read-only electronic access to the interval billing meter and/or receipt of a stream of data pulses proportionate to energy usage. Staff recommends that the rules become effective January 1, 2003. Staff also states that it will continue to examine pilot programs and other metering service elements and will submit a report with its findings on June 30, 2002. Comments on Staff's Proposed Rules are due March 25, 2002. The full texts of the Order Inviting Comments and Staff's Proposed Rules are available on the NEM Website.