CMP Urges Feds to Speed Integration of Regional Power Markets.

Business Editors

AUGUSTA, Maine--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 22, 2001

In the wake of a federal technical conference, Central Maine Power Co. is urging federal regulators to speed up their integration of the nation's regional markets for power.

"The electricity crisis in the American West shows how vital it is to have broad, competitive, and reliable power markets," said CMP President Sara J. Burns. "We believe Washington should accelerate its timetable for smoothing the market seams between areas like New England, New York, and the Mid-Atlantic states to ensure electric customers get maximum benefit from competition."

Burns said CMP is concerned, as a member of the New England Power Pool and as a delivery company with more than a half-million customers, that market improvements may not arrive as quickly as they could.

A FERC technical conference earlier this week demonstrated that some companies in the electric industry favor slower, localized approaches to harmonizing market rules and practices in view of other demands on staff resources. "We believe that would be a mistake," Burns said. "We have already seen that New York and Pennsylvania are moving in opposite directions in setting time spans for their capacity markets; the Northeast needs more coordination to develop a smooth, responsive market for power trades."

CMP believes FERC should encourage further integration of Northeast regional markets with a shared set of "best practices" and smooth system interfaces.

CMP left the power-generation business in March 2000 to comply with Maine law, but continues to deliver energy over more than 20,000 miles of transmission and distribution circuits.

FERC has issued an order calling for the establishment of Regional Transmission Organizations throughout the nation by Dec. 15, 2001, and held a technical conference Tuesday to discuss many of these issues. Electric utilities, including CMP, are developing proposals and rules to facilitate the process.

"Considering the nationwide concern over energy supplies and prices," Burns said, "this is the best time for FERC to use its authority to ensure that regional plans actually promote rather than hinder the expansion of competitive power markets. Regions do have differing characteristics, but unnecessarily diverse definitions, rules, and practices will not serve the public interest. We will make our voice heard in the industry and before our regulators to make that concern clear."

Central Maine Power Co. (www.cmpco.com) serves more than 544,000 customers in central and southern Maine. CMP is a subsidiary of Energy East Corp. (www.energyeast.com), an energy services and delivery company serving approximately 2 million customers (1.4 million electricity and 600,000 natural gas) in upstate New York and New England. Energy East's New York Stock Exchange symbol is EAS.