366 



That is a real challenge. And you heard a lot of both, some clev- 

 erly disguised as efficiency comments and others not so cleverly 

 disguised. That's the nature of the business we deal with. 



We went through a competitive acquisition and we selected three 

 projects. For the three we selected, there were about 50 that we 

 didn't select. We probably haven't funded any of our utility cus- 

 tomers, or not many of them, to the levels that they really would 

 have preferred to have been funded to. 



That's unfortunate, but that's a reality of the financial cir- 

 cumstances that we find ourselves in. And, in fact, through third- 

 party financing arrangements that we're now working on with 

 CARES and other utihties, we think we can remedy that over the 

 next year or so. 



But separating out what are simply appeals for more money or 

 more funding or more punch fi-om legitimate criticisms of ways 

 that we can improve and streamline our abiUty to deliver resource 

 to all of our customers is a major challenge that we at Bonneville 

 face and that the region faces. 



Third and finally, and you'll hear a lot more about this in the 

 next hearing, is competitiveness. I think one of the solutions to 

 that will be in the unbundling of services activity associated with 

 a competitiveness project. 



We have talked a lot about tiered rates today and some have 

 mentioned it as a panacea or an overly simpUstic solution. When 

 we've talked about tiered rates, I would like to convey to you that 

 I'm trying to use that as a metaphor for a whole larger set of rate 

 design issues that will come out of the marketing plan in the 

 unbundling of services. 



What you're basically talking about here are probably a series of 

 rates that will encourage conservation, and give the right resource 

 development signals both for energy and capacity, and a segmenta- 

 tion of markets that will allow customers greater fi-eedom of choice 

 than they currently can get under our existing rate structure. 

 Those rates and markets will be coupled with more streamlined 

 program offerings such that hopefully we can give customers a 

 much wider spectrum of choices that allows them to make decisions 

 that are more customized to their individual needs. At the same 

 time, we plan to have a lot less of the program deUvery overhead 

 which has been undeniably part of our problem over the last two 

 years while we've been gearing up the conservation programs and 

 doing experiments in competitive bid, unsoUcited proposals and 

 billing credits. 



So, I think that I, too, am optimistic about the fiiture here. We've 

 got a lot of problems that we can work on. I think the Competitive- 

 ness Project and what we're doing in the resource acquisition area 

 will help us enormously. And, I think what we do in the rates area, 

 tiered rates and beyond, and the market segmentation that will 

 come out of the unbundling of services portion of that project will 

 provide us and our customers with some very useful price signals 

 and guidance that will help us achieve a new, more efficient and 

 more streamlined resource acquisition structure, which will deUver 

 on the promises that the Regional Act made to the region some 13 

 years ago. 



