Tschamler: Recent Vote Advancing Retail Auction is Closest A State Has Come to Removing Utility from Supply Function

On Friday, Connecticut's budget bill advanced out of committee, which Taff Tschamler, Senior Vice President of Business Development for North American Power and Gas, LLC, said is, "as close as a state has come to getting a utility out of the supply function as I've seen."

Tschamler was speaking yesterday at Platts' Northeast Energy Markets Conference.

Complete text of the committee's recommended substitute budget bill (SB 843) was still not available, but it apparently retains a retail auction of Standard Service customers substantially similar to the proposal from Gov. Malloy (see prior story for details).

That is significant, Tschamler said, because as he understands the Connecticut budget process, in order for the retail auction to be removed from the budget bill, there must now be a replacement for the estimated $80 million in revenue to be generated for the state from the auction.

"It's definitely not a done deal, but it's as close as a state has come to getting a utility out of the supply function as I've seen," on the electric side since the Texas restructuring, Tschamler said, noting the recent progress in the Ohio gas market to remove the utility from the merchant function.

The Connecticut auction had been proposed by Malloy as a part of several solutions to close a $2 billion budget deficit.