Public aggregation enables consumers to acquire professional expertise and legal representation through their local governments in a restructured utility market that will be constantly changing over the next ten years or more. Consumers paying for this transition should be able to effect changes through normal legal processes. However, it is nearly impossible for one person to afford professional representation. But together, through our local governments, we can afford to hire the best professional advice that utilities always have had and will continue to have. Public aggregation is clearly one of the best hopes small consumers have for benefitting from utility deregulation.
Small consumers can get lower prices normally given only to a large consumer.
They can also determine how the electricity they buy is generated. Enron, the nation's largest supplier of electricity, abandoned its expensive marketing plans and decided not to compete for individual residential customers. PECO and UtiliCorp United, Inc., also very large suppliers of electricity, recently followed suit. Currently, not one of the power suppliers registered in Massachusetts are interested in providing individual residential customers with electricity. They are focused instead on selling electricity to larger commercial and industrial consumers.