Solutions

Thanks to an agreement announced yesterday with the softwaresolutions company Excelergy, Southern California Gas Co. (SoCalGas)will expand its energy e-commerce Web site, Energymarketplace.com,to all states that have customer choice programs. The site hadpreviously emphasized the West Coast. While SoCalGas will continueto sponsor the site, Excelergy has assumed development, marketingand sales responsibilities.

With incentives to ink a national contract later in the year,Sempra Energy Solutions has announced a “multi-million-dollar,one-year” energy services contract for the California operations ofPETCO Animal Supplies Inc., one of the leading national pet foodand supplies retailers with about $750 million in annual revenues(1997). Both Sempra and PETCO are headquartered in San Diego. Nationally, PETCO’s annual electricity bill alone exceeds $10million, according to Ken Moss, energy manager for the pet supplychain, which is rapidly expanding with new, larger(15,000-square-foot) retail outlets that now cover 36 states, withenergy coming from more than 100 different gas and electricdistribution utilities. Natural gas nationally accounts for about10% of the chain’s annual energy load. Water is a much smallerportion, Moss said.

CMS Energy’s CMS Marketing, Services and Trading (CMS-MST) hasacquired 50% of North Carolina-based energy marketer Enline EnergySolutions.