You stated By KG on January 29th, 2009 at 7:51 am

“Only the retail portion of the Texas electric market is deregulated – it’s the wholesale generation portion that’s still a monopoly.”

Maybe I am mis understanding you. But, we can get a small business, larger commercial business, manufacturing business, or industrial businesses “commercial” electric rates from one of many electric company providers. And yes, commercial electric users can and do choose the electricity providers in de regulated areas.

If any commercial class electricity user from Texas would like to get a quote please use this form:
http://www.cheaptexaselectricrates.com/contact-us/

If your company uses more than 500,000 kWh per year let us know, and we can get offers from many different companies at once. Why take the time to do it yourself?

Thank you
Shannon Z

You mention “barriers” to entry in the retail market growing – they need to. A number of start up retail providers have gone under, leaving their customers with providers/rates of last resort. This happened because the PUC requires such a low level of capital to become an REP. A company enteres the market offering low rates to the consumer to get business but then doesn’t have enough operating capital to strategically hedge their purchases and not enough money to survive when the price they’re paying for their wholesale power is higher than what they’ve committed to charging their customers.

Deregulation hasn’t been successful (in Texas or anywhere else) – the Dallas Morning News ran a story last week saying that DFW has some of the highest rates in the country. http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/industries/energy/stories/121208dnbuselectricstudy.52ff2d91.html
And, in some states where deregulation legislation has been enacted previously, it’s being suspended. http://www.samhouston.net/news/deregulation/history.htm).

As a new administration comes into office with a mission to enact climate change legislation, the worry is real that keeping the lights on may become unaffordable for hardworking Americans. Controlling emissions is important, but with reasonable, sustainable legislation that doesn’t make electricity too expensive to generate where only the well to do can afford it. We cannot meet growing demand without continued coal generation and clean coal technology is only in development stages and will be costly to bring to fruition. The answers are complicated, but unreasonable climate change legislation will do nothing but raise rates and further stunt our economy.