On Friday, Illinois lawmakers passed an important piece of legislation sure to get the attention of states across the country interested in strategies for energy-efficiency. The General Assembly approved a bill to allow electric utilities of a certain size — those with more than 100,000 customers — to allow residential customers to select a real-time electricity rate. If the Governor signs the bill, which he is expected to, Illinois will become the first state in the country to make real-time prices available to all customers, including residential ones. The bill is intended to give consumers more choice and a way to manage their costs, as well as improve overall electricity system performance and the environment to boot — all by reducing peak electricity demand. Provisions called for in the bill are similar to the structure of the Community Energy Cooperative’s pilot Energy-Smart Pricing Plan ESPP, the nation’s first extensive residential real-time electricity pricing program.

Read the Cooperative’s press release, as well as coverage from the energy publication Restructuring Today.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 10th, 2006 at 4:37 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.