FERC proposes new US utilities
market power test
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission (FERC) Wednesday proposed a new way to measure whether U.S. utilities
are able to unfairly dominate the market on their home turf.
FERC proposed a two-pronged test to measure market
power, one based on a utility's peak demand and the second focused on a seasonal
study of market share.
U.S. utilities that failed the new proposed test would
lose their ability to sell wholesale power at market-based rates and instead
would have to charge for power based on their incremental generation costs plus
a 10 percent profit.
FERC wants to prevent vertically integrated utilities
from using control of their grid networks to discriminate against other
companies that ship power across their grids.
Copyright 2004, Reuters News Service