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The benefits of regional coordination and planning will not be lost as a 

 result of tiered rates and unbundling. To the extent that there are economic 

 benefits fi^om regional resource acquisition, those benefits would be 

 reflected in BPA costs. To the extent that decentralized resource 

 acquisition is less costly or would otherwise provide greater economic 

 benefit, the region will benefit fi-om such activity. A tiered power rate 

 signal would lead to local load management and resource acquisition and 

 operation decisions that better reflect the actual costs and benefits 

 associated with those decisions. In the long term, this would lead to a 

 more efiBcient regional power system than would be the case if local 

 decision-making were responding only to embedded, average-cost price 

 signals. 



The same concept would apply to transmission service and pricing. By 

 offering transmission service to customers who seek to develop their own 

 resources, at wheeling prices that better reflect the actual cost of providing 

 the service, BPA will be facilitating local decisions that indeed provide 

 higher benefits than the regional resource acquisition alternative. In 1992, 

 the Congress passed the National Energy Policy Act of 1992, based on its 

 conclusion that benefits would derive fi-om a more competitive marketplace 

 in electricity. That Act directs all utilities in the United States, including 

 BPA, to be responsive to requests for wheeling across their transmission 

 systems. 



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