Columbia Gas of Virginia says the first year of its two-year,customer-choice program has captured high marks, with aboutone-fifth of its eligible customers in the northern part of thestate having signed up to participate in it so far. This is the”best endorsement for the [program’s] expansion” throughoutColumbia’s entire service territory, a company official said.

“We’re very happy with the results,” particularly since this isthe first time that Virginia has had an unbundling program forresidential and commercial customers, said Mike Anderson, aspokesman for the LDC. “I would say the pilot’s been very good sofar. It’s shown that our customers want a choice,” said DavidBowman, manager of programs and implementation.

Following an eight-month enrollment, Columbia estimates that4,893 of its 26,500 eligible gas customers in northern Virginiahave joined in the state’s first-ever supplier choice program foreither gas or electric. This is about 74% of Columbia’s goal of6,700 customers for the first year of the unbundling pilot,Anderson noted. “We don’t anticipate having any problems meetingthat goal” since the first year of the pilot doesn’t end untilOctober. “In the second year, as the word spreads throughout theneighborhood…we expect a lot more people to sign up,” Bowmansaid.

Columbia said it expects to go before the Virginia StateCorporation Commission (SCC) and ask for the customer-choiceprogram to be expanded to include the entire state.

Bowman believes that the five open-houses that Columbia held,where customers and suppliers met face-to-face rather than over thetelephone, contributed to the success of the program in its firstyear. “You can get a lot better feel for a person from looking themdead in the eye and asking them questions than you can [from] overthe telephone,” he told NGI . “We found the open-houses to be verysuccessful. That was just one way that we got the word out.”

The LDC noted that seven “very active” marketers have beenparticipating in Columbia’s choice program, including ColumbiaEnergy Services, Statoil Energy Services, Marco Energy Marketing,PG&ampE Energy Services, United Energy, Washington Gas EnergyServices and America’s Energy (a subsidiary of Northern VirginaElectric Co-op).

Average residential customers using 80,000 cubic feet of naturalannually have seen savings as much as 8% by participating in thepilot program, Columbia said. And small business owners using400,000 cubic feet annually have saved up to 12%.

Susan Parker

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