Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Electrical Deregulation Will Happen

Arkansas residents should be preparing for the deregulation of the electric utility business.

Randy Jerry, customer service manager with Entergy, said a lot of changes are on the way in the industry.

Under Act 99, which went into law this April, he told members of the Gurdon Rotary Club, Thursday, May 6, deregulation became a reality.

The Arkansas House and Senate passed bill getting the framework for deregulation of the electric utility ready. However, deregulation won't occur for consumers any earlier than Jan. 1, 2002, nor any later than June 30, 2003.

In the interim, he said, there is much to be done by the utility companies.

The General Assembly, though, did make sure the bill passed and signed into law is fair to everyone involved and protects the small business and homeowner ratepayers.

For residential and small business customers, there will be a three-year rate freeze once deregulation begins.

All providers must be licensed by the Arkansas Public Service Commission (PSC), as another protection from fly-by-night companies, as well as to insure their ability to provide reliability of service to their customers.

This will be monitored by the PSC, but, Jerry said, the consumers must be educated in the meantime.

One of the reasons the legislature worked to pass a deregulation bill this session was to help protect the people of Arkansas. Had the legislature not done so the federal government could have stepped in and mandated how Arkansas would be deregulated.

"It's best we did it on our own," Jerry said. "It's good for economic development and sets the scope of what can happen within the industry.

"Other states are looking at deregulating and we don't want to fall behind. This will create an environment with some certainties for everyone involved."

Future electric bills could have three different components distribution, transmission and generation.

The only area to be regulated by the PSC will be generation. Transmission is being handled on the federal level by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

The competition will be in the area of generation, where consumers will have to choose which company they purchase their electricity from. It will be similar to phone service today, where customers must select a long-distance provider.

However, he said, the law passed by the assembly and signed by Gov. Mike Huckabee, does include provisions for slamming, or the unauthorized changing of service from one company to another.