Go to this previous post where I have added an option for receiving a single combined update notice for updates instead of having to subscribe to each sector’s updates separately. 

You can grab there either an RSS Feed address or subscribe to receive the notice by email.

ERC is surveying large industrial customers (primarily of Meralco I presume) to see if they would object to being placed on a public list designating them as contestable customers. So far the response is running about 50/50 but the survey isn’t complete yet.

At issue also is whether the ERC will implement a Do Not Call List (or No Distrubance Request, as they call it) for contestible customers.  It’s currenlty in the draft regulations.

A new power sector entity is being defined by the ERC – Wholesale Aggregator (WA).  This entity, as I understand it, can obtain power from IPPs and resell to DUs (and DUs only – i.e. not to large industrials. DU=Distribution Utility).  The [draft?] rules for ERC licensing of WAs are to be published by ERC next week.  In ERC’s eyes, this will allow bilateral trading in bulk power possibly before WESM starts up. The legal authority of ERC to define such an entity was questioned and rebutted (by presideing Commissioner Butalid) this morning – not sure if it’s still at issue or not.

ERC will be issuing Rules on Confidentiality – not sure what this is going to entail but should be interesting and ultimately contentious.

ERC anticipates that new accounting rules for DU financial reporting will go into effect January 1, 2007 which require the utilities to disaggregate (horizontally separate) their books into seven different business lines (or as many of those seven that the DU is involved in).

Most troublesome statement made by Commissioner Butalid, whom I’ve come to admire:

The good thing about competition is that we don’t have to monitor anything – competitors will do that.

Hoo boy!

He observes here that most of the energy related news is captured by the mainstream press.  That will change.  That parrot ain’t just sleeping. Many people have quickly enough realized the quality of observation they can get from blogs, as demonstrated in this post by Alfie. 

It’s a human quality, a human voice, and it’s fairly direct – an employee comment to his friend.  And it’s disintermediated. Do you feel like you understand the biases or Neal Cruz or Dan Mariano? I don’t. There’s no About Page next to their columns.

Alfie and the Meralco employee my be biased, but at least we have some understanding of what those biases are and we can accomodate them in our evaluations.  This is part of the essence of blogging.