In a favorable step for the state’s suspended electric direct access purchasing program, California’s Supreme Court last Thursday upheld the state regulatory commission’s authority and recent rules laid down for customers who were exempted from the state legislature’s restrictions imposed two years ago. About 15% of the three private sector electric utilities’ load is covered by large customers buying their own power supplies.

Southern California Edison and the utility consumer group, TURN (The Utility Reform Network), challenged the California Public Utilities Commission’s recent implementation of the state law suspending direct access for new customers. Neither the CPUC nor the utility had any immediate reaction to the court’s action.

The state’s high court refused to rescind the CPUC rules on switching between direct access and utility power-buying services, prompting TURN’s senior attorney, Michael Florio, to complain that the action was “another example of the (state) supreme court letting the CPUC do whatever the hell it wants, regardless of the law.”

Edison and TURN had argued to the court that allowing big energy consumers to move back and forth violates the state law passed in the summer of 2001 by the state lawmakers to protect smaller utility-captive customers from what the challengers called “being unfairly burdened” with arguably larger shares of paying for the power costs of the contracts signed by the state Department of Water Resources (DWR).

In a split (3-2) decision last May, the five-member CPUC decided to permit former direct access customers that switched back to utility service to reverse their earlier decisions and pick new energy service providers after the Sept. 20, 2001 suspension date adopted by the regulators.

A return to more direct access is anticipated with the new California Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose initial energy policy favors perhaps adopting the “core-noncore” market structure used in the retail natural gas market in the state, requiring all non-core customers to buy their own energy supplies.

©Copyright 2003 Intelligence Press Inc. Allrights reserved. The preceding news report may not be republishedor redistributed, in whole or in part, in any form, without priorwritten consent of Intelligence Press, Inc.