They don't know what to do. They'd better figure it out soon, because a new breed of Web sites is making it easy for both business and residential customers to desert their longtime electricity providers. Ah, for the good old days of no competition and easy rate hikes. In the past, utilities were beholden only to the federal government. If you think of it as a concentric circle, the federal government was in the center and customers were on the outside.
Utilities are on the threshold of real competition.
Things began to change in the mid-1990s, when the federal government informed suppliers, including utilities, that they'd have to start doing business electronically with the government or get cut off. But the turning point came in 1996, when the government left it to the states to bring down energy prices. That year the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued two orders to eliminate monopoly power over the transmission of electricity. The first move prompted thinking about how to bring the energy industry online. The second is leading to the piecemeal deregulation of electricity, state by state.