Wwp Program Offers Customers Choice Of Rate Plans Pilot Program Will Include 5,000 Customers As Utility Continues To Experiment With Deregulation

Washington Water Power Co. wants to give about 5,000 customers more choices on buying electricity.

A pilot program would allow a random sampling of Washington and Idaho consumers to stick with the existing, regulated rate, buy at potentially lower rates fixed for one year or one month, or select a “green” portfolio of wind, conservation and other non-traditional resources, said Rates Manager Tom Dukich.

WWP would be the supplier unless the customer bought or leased a specialized meter. Those households and businesses could buy from anyone, he said.

The proposal was explained to Washington legislators last week, said Tom Paine, WWP’s director of government affairs.

He said the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission will be briefed Wednesday. The concept has also been outlined for the Idaho Public Utilities Commission.

He said detailed plans could be filed in both states by the end of October, with hopes for commission action by year end.

The proposal, and legislation being drafted along similar lines, should allay concerns raised by studies that show Northwest electricity rates rising if the industry is deregulated, Paine said.

Consumers would have continued access to the rates traditionally charged by their utility, he said. In the Northwest, that means prices just one-third those charged in other parts of the country.

But customers willing to assume some risk in return for some of the benefits of an open market would have that option, Paine said.

That choice would not be open under legislation WWP is framing along with a coalition of other utilities and business and consumer groups.

Paine said complete consumer freedom raises issues like reliability, billing, and telephone solicitations that spook many legislators.

Spokane Valley Republican Larry Crouse, who chairs the House Energy and Utilities Committee, said he too is working on a bill that would address those concerns.

His Senate counterpart, William Finkbeiner, said he plans to submit a bill to assure that residential customers get the benefits of a deregulated market.

He dismissed the Department of Energy finding that rates will go 25 percent higher in the region. ” I think that there’s a lot of things they’re not taking into account,” he said.

Officials and lawmakers in Idaho, where rates are the lowest in the country, are particularly wary, Paine said. Even so, preliminary response to the company’s proposition has been encouraging.

The bill would let large electricity users go to the market, as many have demanded. About 30 WWP industrial and commercial customers have been buying up to one-third of their power from other suppliers in a pilot program launched in 1996.

Dukich said power options would in part be a successor to another program WWP launched that would have given about 2,800 customers access to other utilities willing to sell them power.

Only one other utility was interested in trying to serve a random sampling, so the test was restricted to Harrington and Odessa.

Grant County Public Utility District and a subsidiary of Public Service Co. of New Mexico are now making sales efforts in the two communities, Dukich said. Grant County has had some success.

, DataTimes