Originally Published in Public Utilities Fort Nightly, March 1, 1995
By David J. Cook
Deregulation is a battle over metering relationships with commercial customers, not a struggle between competing suppliers of energy. As long as the local electric utility emerges from the process with exclusive control over its metering, credit, and billing relationships, then deregulation will only cement its position as the customer’s primary energy service provider \(em and further enhance the “pool” concept by which the local utility acts as agent for the retail customer to purchase energy from independent power producers (IPPs). This outcome will prevail even if regulators adopt retail wheeling.
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