PUC lays out electric competition rules

Monday, June 8, 1998 | 9:29 a.m.

Metering, billing and customer service will be products offered competitively in the electric utility industry when new companies begin serving Nevadans by Dec. 31, 1999.

The Public Utilities Commission of Nevada last week issued an order identifying potentially competitive services, a long-awaited document that spells out what power companies will be able to offer customers when the monopolistic system currently in place gives way to the free market.

The PUC already has made it clear that companies will be able to offer electricity in competition with Nevada Power Co. in Southern Nevada and Sierra Pacific Resources in the north. It also explained that the transmission of electricity won't occur in a competitive environment -- building and installing duplicate sets of wires isn't the intent of the law.

However, there are other services commissioners believe should be turned over to competition and the document approved on Thursday not only delineates those services, but gives an explanation why the PUC rejected arguments against competition.

Metering services that have been identified as competitive include provision of the meter itself, operation and maintenance, meter reading and data management.

"The main concern raised by (interested) parties was the customer learning curve associated with the new products and services associated with metering," the order says.

Billing services expected to become competitive include account services, the billing itself and payment collection and processing.

"Customers will have to learn which entity to call about billing inquiries but, again, one objective of the commission's customer education program is to prevent this potential customer confusion," the order says. "Competitive billing will entail the data transfer between entities providing other services and the billing company, but the development of standard data formats will facilitate such data transfers at a small incremental cost."

Customer services involves interaction with customers, including the provision of customer information, trouble reporting and resolution of customer inquiries, including service complaints, the order says.

Also on Thursday, the PUC issued a draft of a regulation on distribution tariffs, another document related to turning the electrical industry over to competition. The proposed regulation, now in a public comment period, details how companies can charge customers for delivering electricity from the transmission system to the end user.