Energy companies like PanEnergy, Power Clearinghouse, Destec and Valero buy and sell power on a free market, just as pork bellies, coffee, oil and metals have been for years. Ultimately the power is sold to an electric utility which delivers the power to consumers at retail. This free market has emerged as a result of the 1992 Energy Policy Act. The act permits wholesalers, which include utilities, unregulated generators, cogenerators, cooperatives and a new class of entity, power marketers, to buy and sell power for resale only. This doesn't mean that a you can go out and buy wholesale electricity for your home or business today, this is a retail transaction, i.e. not for resale .
Most retail service is provided by an electric utility on a monopoly or near-monopoly basis.
Texas retail competition looms In late 1997, having failed to get what they wanted in the 1997 legislature the investor owned utilities in Texas are using accounting techniques to resolve their financial problems and put themselves in a dominant position when competition arrives. This is being done with the acqiescence of the Texas regulators who are otherwise unwilling to make much needed decisions to open the retail market to competition, as California is now doing. To find out more about retail costs in Texas and across the nation, check out Texas PUC's Rate Survey which gives a comparison of retail electricity costs in Texas and across the nation. If you would like to know more about the evolving electricity market join the Gulf Coast Power Association , a professional association of utilities, industrial and commercial users of power, independent power producers, power marketers and consultants in the electricity business.