Believe it or not, a time will come when electricity is not on the front page, the legislature winds up its business in April and "72 percent" signifies nothing except perhaps the Orioles' loss ratio.
It's then that the more obscure pieces of the electricity bill being considered by the General Assembly will come into play.
Ignore, if you can, flashy, short-term fixes such as temporarily limiting Baltimore Gas and Electric's July rate increase to 15 percent rather than 72 percent -- which doesn't look much different from what was offered in earlier plans. Look past the theater of firing the Public Service Commission and the people's counsel.
The legislature is starting to address long-term problems and risks in Maryland's power markets, and those may be the most important remedies.
Among other things, the bill would block BGE and other utilities from lending at sweetheart rates to unregulated affiliates without PSC permission.
I chronicled this practice, which can force ratepayers to subsidize unrelated businesses, on May 17. PSC documents from a gas-rate case last year showed that BGE was lending to an affiliated cash pool at a cost of 6 percent or so while being repaid at rates as low as 1.5 percent.
Perhaps most significantly, the measure would reform the process by which BGE and other utilities buy electricity and pass the cost to ratepayers.
One reason for the looming, 72 percent rate shock is that BGE was required to shop for juice and lock in prices in very short order last year, when energy costs were at record highs thanks to Hurricane Katrina, big demand and instability in the Middle East.
The new bill would give the BGE and other utilities much more leeway to dip into the market when the time looks right. Utilities could lock in long-term prices when costs are low. They could spread purchases over longer periods. They could even make deals without going through the auction process -- with PSC permission.
In other words, they could diversify their juice portfolios. Diversification means lower risk in almost any market. Even BGE officials had nice things to say about such flexibility yesterday.
The legislation would also make the process more transparent, requiring utilities to disclose the identities of electricity suppliers within three months of an auction's completion.
