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Here in California the big news is that deregulation of power utilities is a fiasco, causing pricing of electricity in San Diego to
double. I'm curious how indy theatres in Southern California are dealing with this. Anyone know anything?

Isn't it interesting that deregulation of anything is done in the interest of the consumer to stimulate competition in order to bring down prices, but always results in an increase in price!

Here in Pennsylvania, we can choose our electric supplier from among dozens throughout the state. We can actually shop by price, and this has resulted in lower rates for those of us willing to shop around.
It's kind of like the phone companies, but we do have to commit for at least a year to one company.

Utility De-Regulation is being carried out and implemented on a state to state basis. Currently 21 states have enacted final restructuring statutes (CA and PA are two of them), 10 have bills pending, and 15 have task forces working on the issue.

There is also Federal Legislation in the works, but it appears that the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee cannot agree on several key issues. These include the concept of legislating retail reciprocity, which would prevent an energy company in a state that has been deregulated from selling energy in a state that has not opted to deregulate; and mandates for energy companies to purchase power from renewable fuel sources.

Electricity is a supply and demand commodity, California has the Power Exchange in which wholesale electricity is bid on, this will lead to market volatility. You also have to take into consideration the condition of CA's generation and transmission systems, which I'm not aware of, but the older the distribution system, the higher the maintenance costs.

You may want to look into aggregated buying (buying group) or into off-peak hour times and rates, talk with someone from your states utility commission, they should have information available to consumers on rate protection and purchasing options.

Greg Borr
Ready Theatre Systems

We dereged in Maine this year and it brought prices down immediately. I was even more surprised to find that "off peak" elec is the biggest buy! Movies tend to be doing their main consumption off peak and they sell the juice for less. We saved 2000.00 the first year by a simple couple of phone calls.

The deregging hasn't really picked up here yet as the hounds from commerce hell have yet to pick up the scent!

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Mike Hurley
www.bigscreenbiz.com