North America's Largest Energy Retailer Selects NewEnergy Associates for a Load Forecasting System.

Business Editors & Energy Writers

ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 21, 2002

NewEnergy Associates, a pioneer in software and consulting for the energy industry, announced today that Direct Energy Marketing Limited (DEML) has selected its RetailOffice (TM) application to perform load profiling, load forecasting and market settlement, and to support energy scheduling functions for its rapidly expanding retail electricity business in North America.

Companies like Direct Energy are looking for ways to improve the efficiency of their day-to-day energy management operations. "Our objective was to quickly implement a powerful yet scalable system that could immediately support our current business needs within Canadian and U.S. energy markets. NewEnergy RetailOffice not only addresses our immediate needs, it also provides a platform to support our aggressive growth objectives," stated Peter Taylor, IS Director with Direct Energy Marketing Limited. Taylor added, "Thanks to NewEnergy Associates, we have seen clear evidence in less than a month that RetailOffice will provide significant efficiency to our business processes."

RetailOffice is the latest solution for gas and electric providers competing for new customers (residential, small commercial and large C&I), in active, high-volume competitive markets. NewEnergy RetailOffice enables companies, both large and small, to automate and manage multi-commodity load profiling and forecasting, scheduling, nominations, quote management and shadow settlement functions securely and efficiently over the Internet. Its scalable architecture can support energy companies with just a few hundred, or as many as several million customers. Additional capabilities such as position reporting, pricing analysis, complex billing, and gross margin reporting provide energy companies with the competitive tools they need to succeed in their particular markets.

Direct Energy Marketing Limited and its U.S. affiliates Energy America and Republic Power are wholly owned subsidiaries of Centrica plc, the largest provider of energy and other essential services in the UK. DEML and Energy America offer energy services to the largest commercial and residential customer base in North America. Through its upstream oil and gas division, it conducts its exploitation and production of natural gas and oil reserves.

New Energy Associates, LLC is a leading provider of decision support and operational management software and consulting services to the energy industry. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, NewEnergy has specialized in the development and support of integrated, state-of-the-art business applications and consulting services for more than 25 years. NewEnergy currently supports over 400 software installations at more than 200 national and international electric and natural gas companies.