Substantial Customer Considerations in Retail Competition
he Committee on Electricity of the National T Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) has been studying various aspects of retail electric competition. Its Customer Choice Working Group, under the leadership of Chairman John Strand of the Michigan Public Service Commission, has tried to explore, in a nonprescriptive manner, a number of issues that will be important to customers when they are offered competitive energy choices. These issues will be just as pertinent to natural gas markets, especially if the two industries offer a transition to competition close in time.
Education, Education, Education
Customers start off with a lifetime of assumptions about their utilities. It is essential to give them an honest explanation of the coming changes and an accurate understanding of the choices that are being put before them.
What do they need to know? Additionally, who will tell them?
Unbundling Service Elements
A point to be explained early is the concept of unbundling. Customers have never had to think about the components of their utility service, but now they will face the possibility of having different providers for parts of what was formerly a single service package. In most restructuring plans, they will be offered the choice of different providers of the energy commodity-natural gas or electricity.
Consumers need to be given an awareness William H. Smith Jr. is chief of the Bureau of Rate and Safety Evaluation for the Iowa Utilities Board and directs the Board's FERC participation.