Illinois Retail Electricity Update

Lynne Kiesling

I’ve been so busy that I’ve even missed the opportunity for some shameless self-promotion. Mary Wisniewski wrote an article in Thursday’s Sun-Times about recently-passed legislation that will require Illinois utilities to offer a real-time pricing contract to their residential customers. The legislation requires the Illinois Commerce Commission to make a determination of whether or not this policy would generate net benefits for the people of Illinois. The article has a couple of quotes from yours truly about the dynamic and technological innovation benefits of residential real-time pricing, as well as some quotes from George Gross, an expert power systems engineer at the University of Illinois.

Baby steps toward a more fair, efficient, and innovative retail electric power market.

2 thoughts on “Illinois Retail Electricity Update”

  1. Lynn,

    I’ve been trying to get your attention with this issue since the beginning of the month.

    Here’s my analysis and question:

    Exelon is the single largest source of electricity in Illinois due to its size and efficiency.

    Exelon generates a large amount of inexpensive electricity from its nuclear powers plants. Unfortunately, the rules of the auction state that Exelon cannot sell most of that cheap electricity directly to the consumer (me!).

    State regulators decided Exelon could put up for bid no more than 35 percent of its 11K+ megawatts of nuclear generated electricity.

    The ICC said this was done (ICC’s explanation) to keep Exelon from dominating the auction. Because of Exelon’s size and cheap electricity, it’s feared that Exelon would ace out the competition.

    Why is Exelon fighting with one hand behind its back? Why not provide the state with all the energy it can? It’s efficient, it’s cheap, and the power is abundant. Isn’t this the goal?

    Is this an example of regulated de-regulation?

  2. You have it wrong. Exelon sold all of its nuclear power. It’s just that Exelon can put up for bid no more than 35 percent of its 11K+ megawatts of nuclear generated electricity. State regulators are just trying to create the appearance of competition by making Exelon sell through middlemen.

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