One of the biggest challenges to creating active retailcompetition among residential and small business energy customersis the red tape customers must plough through at their localutility, but in California the trend is moving toward doing thesetransfers quicker and more inexpensively on the Internet, beginninglater this spring (May 20).

Southern California Gas Co. has filed its proposed rates withstate regulators and is on track to process requests electronicallyfrom aggregators who sign up residences and businesses switchingtheir supplier from SoCalGas to the aggregator’s supply source.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and San Diego Gas and Electric Co.so far are not offering to switch gas customers’ suppliers via theInternet, according to spokespersons for the two companies.However, they both use electronic bulletin boards and provideinformation on their Web sites to guide customers through theprocess of switching to another gas supplier. All three utilitiesjointly participate in the Energy Marketplace, a Web site developedto match wholesale gas buyers and sellers.

The California Public Utilities Commission in February directedthe three major investor-owned gas utilities in the state to offeran electronic system for core aggregation customers similar to thatprovided by electric utility counterparts under the Californiaindustry restructuring begun earlier this month. SoCalGasemphasized that its plan does not change the process for customersswitching their gas suppliers, it just allows that process to becompleted much more quickly.

The Internet-based Energy Marketplace will be used as theso-called “platform” for electronic processing of the direct accessservice requests for SoCalGas to transport the supplies beingpurchased outside of the utility system. For gas transactions,aggregators are expected to save because they will only need toinvest in Internet access. In the electric aggregation programs, sofar, aggregators have to invest in additional hardware or software,or pay a processing fee.

SoCalGas and the other two utilities for some time have beentalking about making changes that would boost the amount ofparticipation in the retail gas program by making it easier andmore attractive for third-party aggregators to go after the small,mass market customers.

A SoCalGas spokesperson indicated that it expects to be ready inadvance of the May 20 CPUC deadline to start the electronic serviceand then plans to add other services that will be what the utilitycalls “even more attractive to aggregators and other utilities.” Richard Nemec, Los Angeles

©Copyright 1998 Intelligence Press, Inc. All rightsreserved. The preceding news report may not be republished orredistributed in whole or in part without prior written consent ofIntelligence Press, Inc.