ABSTRACT
For example, during the period when the U.S. power industry was grappling with the FERC “mega-NOPR,” the notice of pending rule changes sent out prior to order 888, many people believed that community churches would form “load aggregator” organizations, pooling the loads of their congregation’s home and business owners, and jointly negotiating with Gencos for power at the wholesale level and with the local Disco for local delivery. Thus, people said, this small group of consumers would enjoy such benefits as lower cost of electric industry de-regulation. While such “church-cos” are possible within most de-regulated retail industry structures, they are unlikely to develop, or last long if they do, because most congregations would have little incentive to go through the effort. The church’s members will be able to obtain similar savings from any number of competitive retail companies (Rescos) performing the same service. Very likely, many of these will offer prices below anything the church can obtain. Regardless, their prices will be low enough that the considerable continuing attention and resource cost required to run a “load aggregator function” well will not be worth the effort to the church congregation.
