Cinergy Corp. chairman James Rogers had good news this week for the utility's commercial and industrial customers in Southwest Ohio.

        The parent of Cincinnati Gas & Electric Co. has no immediate plans to implement market-based rates for those customer classes, although it now has that right under Ohio's 18-month-old Electric Choice law, Mr. Rogers said during a speech at the Queen City Club.

Rogers

        The law allows utilities to switch to market-based rates once 20 percent of the commercial and industrial classes have switched to alternative suppliers.

        Both those customer classes have passed that threshold, but Mr. Rogers said the utility won't make a decision for possibly another year.

        Only 1.5 percent of CG&E's residential customers have switched suppliers, and some critics say steps should be taken to change that.

        But Mr. Rogers said it's too early to make a final judgment on deregulation. He points out that customer rates have been frozen — in CG&E's case since 1994 — and adjusted for inflation electric rates have declined. Deregulation has also fueled a flurry of new generation which has improved the availability and reliability of the electric power.

— Mike Boyer

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