While Pennsylvania and New York are tied for the lead inelectric restructuring, Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia and RhodeIsland made the greatest progress so far this year, according to ananalysis by the Center for the Advancement of Energy Markets(CAEM), an independent consulting firm based in Burke, VA.

CAEM has developed an indexing method to measure the progress ofstates in their efforts to restructure the electric industry. Using18 key criteria, CAEM comes up with a score with zero representingthe traditional monopoly model and 100 representing completeimplementation of the competitive model.

In a July update to CAEM’s Retail Energy Deregulation Index (REDIndex), Pennsylvania and New York held the national lead incustomer choice with index scores of 65 and 64 out of 100,respectively. Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia and Rhode Island jumped20 points since the original CAEM index in February. Texas leadsthe South with a score of 53 and a ranking of fifth in the nation.And the national average is an index of 21 up from 17 in February.

“There seems to be a stronger movement in states that rankhigher in average [power prices], since all contiguous statesscoring in the top 10 for price also were the top 20 in the REDIndex,” said CAEM President Ken Malloy, a former staff member atFERC, DOE and the Illinois Commerce Commission. “But one cannotdraw the conclusion that this is a movement confined to high-pricedstates. Nevada, Montana and Texas all are below-average states onprice but are ranked above average in the RED Index.”

Malloy said he’s confident customer choice will be implementedin all states eventually. “But there is so much detail involved in51 jurisdictions moving at different speeds on different issuesthat we need a user-friendly scorecard to measure each state’sprogress. The RED Index is the only effort to synthesize the massof detail into a single number…. We believe the Red Index willhelp states benchmark their efforts against other states.”

Rocco Canonica

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