California’s pioneering Internet-based retail gas market, theEnergy Marketplace, expanded earlier this month to include some ofthe largest energy users in the state and is planning a furtherexpansion into electricity marketing later this year. The plan ofdeveloper Southern California Gas Co. and partners Pacific Gas andElectric Co. and San Diego Gas and Electric Co. is to ultimately gonational with a network of other utilities in the South andNortheast.

Marking its one-year anniversary next month, the natural gassales web site has had seven gas marketers cut more than 300 dealsover the Internet so far, and it is betting that large energyend-users will find the transaction fee-based service of use inlining up their own supplies of both gas and electricity in thefuture.

“We want to make the product more valuable to our customers,”said Mark Gaines, SoCalGas’s director of marketing staffoperations. “[Non-core customers] already are used to the processof finding an outside supplier, so we think [unlike the coremarket], the non-core customers are somewhat predisposed to using amarket like this. We are trying to open the [web site] to a broadercustomer base and allow them to have access to greater potentialsavings. As non-core customers, their net savings potential isgreater, so it is all the more reason for them to use EnergyMarketplace.”

In SoCalGas’s territory, alone, the total potential customersegment represents about 1,000 to 1,200 very large energy userswith a collective gas load averaging more than 1 Bcf/d. Potentialcustomers include universities, hospitals and large industrialconcerns. Longer term, PG&E and SDG&E also will be addingtheir non-core customers. Duke and Enserch are among the suppliersnow participating in the Marketplace that service large non-coreend-users.

Gaines said SoCal expects the volume of each load of non-corecustomers using the web site to be five to 10 times larger than theaverage marketer’s core customer loads now. He said SoCalGas iscurrently in discussions with a number of utilities in states suchas Georgia, Pennsylvania, New York and Massachusetts about signingon to the Energy Marketplace and offering it to their marketers,shippers and large customers.

“There is significant interest out there,” he said, noting thatthese areas are trailing behind California in opening their marketsfor gas and electricity. “The situation varies somewhat from stateto state. In some states, the regulators are the driver and inother states the utility is the driver.”

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