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A Los Angeles company is but one example of the many new businesses that have been created or expanded as the result of deregulation of the power industry.
New Energy Ventures, an aggregate company that buys electricity on the wholesale market and then sells it to customers who use electricity, was started in 1995, three years before California's electricity market was open to competition.
The company has since opened an office in San Francisco and offices in other states - Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, Arizona and soon Texas -- that have, like California, moved toward deregulation of their electric utilities. This year, as electric retail competition moves into full swing in more of these states, the company is predicting revenues of more than $1.1 billion.
"Ours is a business that was created explicitly because of the advent of deregulation," says Lew Phelps, a New Energy Ventures spokesman
Phelps expects there can only be more new businesses as more states begin to deregulate their utilities.
He says that when the utilities were monopolies, there was little need...