Known as a tolling agreement, the contract calls for Nevada Power to supply natural gas to Reliant, which will convert that gas to electricity for a fixed tolling fee. The 16-month contract begins on June 1, 2004 and extends through the 2004 and 2005 peak summer periods. It provides Nevada Power with full-dispatch rights over the course of the contract for up to 482 MW of base- load capacity and energy. Nevada Power will use the energy for its customers located in and around Las Vegas.

"We are pleased to have been selected by Nevada Power to serve a portion of its capacity and energy needs and look forward to a continued productive relationship with the company and its customers," said David Manceor, vice president origination, Reliant Energy. "This contract is an ideal fit for our portfolio of wholesale power generation assets in the West and reflects our ability to fully serve the needs of large power customers."

Bighorn, which is located south of Las Vegas in southern Clark County near Primm, Nevada, began commercial operation in February 2004. The 591-megawatt facility consists of two gas turbines and one steam turbine that operate in a combined-cycle mode and duct- firing capacity that operates in a peaking mode.

Reliant Resources, Inc. (NYSE: RRI), based in Houston, Texas, provides electricity and energy services to retail and wholesale customers in the U.S., marketing those services under the Reliant Energy brand name. The company provides a complete suite of energy products and services to more than 1.8 million electricity customers in Texas ranging from residences and small businesses to large commercial, industrial and institutional customers. Reliant also serves large commercial and industrial clients in the PJM (Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland) Interconnection. The company has approximately 20,000 megawatts of power generation capacity in operation, under construction or under contract.

For more information, visit our web site at www.reliantresources.com .

This news release contains "forward-looking statements." Forward- looking statements are statements that contain projections about our revenues, income, earnings and other financial items, our plans and objectives for the future, future economic performance, or other projections or estimates about our assumptions relating to these types of statements. These statements usually relate to future events and anticipated revenues, earnings, business strategies, competitive position or other aspects of our operations or operating results. In many cases you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as "anticipate," "estimate," "believe," "continue," "could," "intend," "may," "plan," "potential," "predict," "should," "will," "expect," "objective," "projection," "forecast," "goal," "guidance," "outlook", "effort", "target" and other similar words.

However, the absence of these words does not mean that the statements are not forward-looking. We have based our forward-looking statements on management's beliefs and assumptions based on information available to management at the time the statements are made. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by forward-looking statements as a result of many factors or events, including legislative and regulatory developments, the outcome of pending lawsuits, governmental proceedings and investigations, the effects of competition, financial market conditions, access to capital, the timing and extent of changes in commodity prices and interest rates, weather conditions, changes in our business plan and other factors we discuss in our other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Each forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date of the particular statement, and we undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. SOURCE Reliant Energy