Energy Choice
                            

Matters

PUC Commish: Retail Suppliers' Businesses "In Jeopardy" In Pennsylvania From Flawed Wholesale Market Design
-- Flawed Wholesale Market Cost Retail Market The Chance to End Utility-Offered Default Service

October 23, 2014

Email This Story
Copyright 2010-14 EnergyChoiceMatters.com
Reporting by Paul Ring • ring@energychoicematters.com

Retail energy suppliers' businesses in Pennsylvania are in jeopardy due to the flawed wholesale market design, including the capacity market, should the state experience another winter like last year's polar vortex, PUC Commissioner James Cawley told the National Energy Marketers Association's Mid-Atlantic Energy Summit

Cawley said last winter's issues reflect, "a wholesale market design problem," which ended up harming the retail market.

"I'm afraid we're going to lose the whole [retail] experiment," should another polar vortex hit, Cawley said.

Cawley called the impact of the polar vortex, "real, real disappointing," observing that he believed, "we could have gotten legislation through," to end utility-offered default service absent the polar vortex.

As it was, the polar vortex killed a proposal to end utility-offered default service, and he does not see such a policy being taken up again for some time.

Of the wholesale market design, Cawley said that it appeared that generators receiving capacity payments to be available to produce energy did not produce when needed.

Such generators should have been required to give such money back, or at least in the future prevented from receiving capacity payments when they could not produce when needed.

ADVERTISEMENT
NEW Jobs on RetailEnergyJobs.com:
• NEW! -- Regulatory and New Markets Manager -- Retail Supplier -- New York
• NEW! -- Director - Business Analyst and Pricing -- Retail Supplier -- New York
• NEW! -- Manager, Risk Management -- Retail Supplier -- Houston
• NEW! -- Customer Experience & Retention Manager -- Retail Supplier
• NEW! -- Sales Business Development Manager -- Retail Supplier -- Houston
• NEW! -- Regional Sales Manager - Ohio/Texas/Various -- Retail Supplier
• NEW! -- Senior Supply Analyst, PJM -- Retail Supplier -- Houston
• NEW! -- Controller -- Retail Supplier -- Houston
• NEW! -- Director of Operations -- Retail Supplier
• NEW! -- Branch Sales Manager -- Retail Supplier
• NEW! -- Pricing Manager -- Retail Supplier -- Houston
• Director of Channel Development
• Energy Sales Representative -- Texas -- Dallas
• Vice President, Operations
• Pricing Analyst
• Sr. Pricing Analyst -- Retail Provider -- Houston