In response to FERC's charge for industry to develop a standards-setting organization by March 15, 2002, the Alliance of Energy Suppliers and EEI, with participation by you, the industry, are conducting a series of industry-workshops to facilitate the development of this standard-setting organization . FERC made it very clear at its December 19 public meeting that if we [industry] do not develop this entity and its functions, FERC would do it for us. This is a very important issue to the generator and power marketing community. The Alliance recognizes that it is imperative that the generator and power marketing community be involved in this process from the very beginning, so we strongly encourage your participation in these workshops.

So to preempt a FERC-mandated process, we strongly encourage industry to participate in these workshops, so to provide valuable commercial input into the process that aims to achieve industry consensus around a work product that will be submitted to FERC on or by March 15. If not, we will experience another month-long series of FERC-directed daily meetings, similar to that of the Generator Interconnection process. And, if you did not have the pleasure of being apart of those proceedings, the overwhelming sentiment was that it was a strain for many companies to allocate personnel and financial resources to attend meetings for three to four days out of a week for a full month.

So to that end, Tuesday, January 15, 2002 in Phoenix, AZ will kick-off the first of a series of national meetings held in various regions of the country. Recognizing that market participants are located in various geographical locations, we tried to be sensitive to that and choose meeting locations accordingly. However, it is important to stress that these meetings are sequential, in that each meeting will yield a draft work product more refined than that of the last meeting. So we encourage you or a member of your company to attend all four regional meetings and the final local Washington meeting in February to provide input throughout the process.

Prior to each meeting, a draft agenda will be circulated to help you prepare for the meeting. We scheduled these meetings around the announced January 22-25 FERC Technical conference on Standard Market Design and the follow-up January 28 DOE meeting on Commercial Business Standards, so to allow maximum attendance at all of these very necessary and inter-related conferences and meetings.

Attached is the registration form and draft agenda for the Phoenix, AZ meeting. The meeting will be from 8AM-3PM. Hotel information is provided on the registration form as well. We are extending registration through January 14.

Upcoming Alliance/EEI Commercial Business Standards Workshops :
Tuesday, January 29- Cincinnati, OH
Friday, February 1- New York City
Tuesday, February 12- Atlanta, GA
Tuesday, February 26- Washington, D.C.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at (202) 508-5098 or via e-mail.




Tonja Wicks
Manager, Energy Supply Policy
Alliance of Energy Suppliers
Edison Electric Institute
Phone: (202) 508-5098
Fax: (202) 508-5600
Fax: (202) 508-5445

 - draft Phoenix agenda rev.doc 
 - RegForm.Phoenix.doc 
 - Alliance of Energy Suppliers.vcf