Once bastions of stability and security, electric utilities are going through an unprecedented level of upheaval brought about by competitive pressures, industry consolidation, political maneuvering and technological change. All of the stakeholders in Wisconsin acknowledge the need to redefine themselves during this shakeup; unfortunately, the consensus ends there. The most powerful utilities are moving aggressively to accomplish their ambitious designs, sowing confusion and mistrust as they go about rewriting the rules while the game is being played. At the center of this free-for-all lies the PSC, constantly positioning and repositioning itself to control the deregulation debate until retail wheeling becomes a fait accompli.

RENEW and other clean energy groups have had their worlds turned upside down by these changes. Though the profusion of deregulation-related issues and merger proposals would argue for a deliberative and measured approach, the PSC is maneuvering to fast-forward its way through a thicket of complex legal and policy issues in overlapping proceedings. Indeed, the PSC intends, by the end of 1997, to issue decisions on such highly technical questions as:

• affiliated interest standards (i.e., rules to avoid sweetheart arrangements between subsidiaries owned by the same holding company)
• generation and transmission market power (i.e., whether true competition can emerge in a market dominated by multistate utilities)
• revising service standards on the provision of power;
• Advance Plan reform;
• merchant power plants (i.e., whether power plants can be built without a determination of need)
• independent operation of the state's transmission system
• funding future investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy
• unbundling rates and pricing options

While all this is going on the PSC will render decisions on a number of other important cases before it, including rate cases for all regulated utilities, the proposed Primergy merger, the forming of a new utility called Interstate made up of Wisconsin Power & Light and two Iowa utilities, major transmission lines proposed for northwestern Wisconsin, and major repairs proposed for the Kewaunee Nuclear Power Plant.

Imagine having only half a day in which to compete in all 10 events of a decathlon and you'll begin to appreciate the degree to which this lineup of proceedings is arbitrarily compressed. Indeed, squeezing all of this work into such a short time frame will tax the PSC's ability to make informed and reasoned judgments on these vitally important matters.

Such an accelerated schedule clearly favors the largest and most powerful stakeholders, and places a tremendous strain on smaller entities with limited resources, especially public interest groups like RENEW. It also reduces the level of media scrutiny and independent oversight needed to ensure that the public interest is being served.

Of course, that might not be of concern to the PSC. It is worth remembering that the two Commissioners who embraced retail wheeling did so only one week after presiding over a series of public hearings in which hundreds of ordinary citizens, including 23 RENEW members, expressed their opposition to it. For an agency obsessed with the issue of customer choice, the PSC proved quite deaf to the stated preferences of the vast majority of those customers who cared enough about this issue to show up.

It will be even more difficult for the public to be heard when the PSC's administrative machinery reaches full throttle later this year.

RENEW's near-term challenge is to prevent the PSC from effectively closing the book on renewables, as it would like as evidenced by its deregulation workplan and its rulings on Advance Plan 7. While the PSC itself may be a lost cause, it does not operate in a political vacuum. We continue to hope that the current political dynamic can be changed in a way that forces the PSC to become more responsive to the public.