Connecticut regulators, bowing to pressure from marketers, havelowered penalty rates and delayed opening of the market for smallindustrials and large commercial customers of state LDCs until Jan.1.

In an interim decision issued Oct. 28 (95-02-07 & others)the Dept. of Public Utility Control revised unbundling rules forConnecticut Natural Gas (CNG), Southern Connecticut Gas (SCG), andYankee Gas Services. On a key issue, regulators dropped the penaltyrate for CNG and Yankee from $30/Mcf to $5.00/Mcf for dailyimbalances in excess of 10%.

In addition customers will be required to sign up for the LDC’sstandby service for 12 months if the daily imbalance tolerance isviolated by an under-delivery more than five times in a given12-month period. Originally the standby requirement would havekicked in after two violations. On SCG only the standby servicerequirement will be enforced. There will be no per Mcf charge.

Marketers will be allowed to pool customers under mostcircumstances and to trade imbalances under the new service. Alsonomination procedures have been modified to allow less advancenotice for nominations and intraday nominations.

Marketers still are not satisfied with the resolution of thecash-out issue, which sets up two separate approaches, one tied tothe LDC’s commodity costs and the other to posted prices. TheConnecticut agency will be monitoring the results and expects toeventually choose just one procedure.

Service to industrial/commercial customers (FTS-2) had beenscheduled to start Nov. 1, but because of delays involved insetting the rule, the marketers had requested a later date.

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