369 



what kind of tailored mechanisms utihties need in order to proceed, 

 and to give them the kind of flexibihty that they're requiring. 



We're also a year into decentralizing and trying to be clearer 

 about the authorities and the responsibilities that the areas have 

 to make decisions at their level. 



In addition, this summer, as a part of the competitiveness 

 project, we're starting into an overall review of how to alternatively 

 deliver our conservation programs. There have been a lot of excel- 

 lent ideas out there. Tiered rates is getting way too much emphasis 

 today for my money. 



But Pacific Power has an innovative way that they run programs 

 in the region. They use an energy service charge. That's something 

 that came up about a year ago that several of our customers are 

 interested in. Energy service companies which you've talked about 

 quite a bit are interesting to some customers. 



We've been exploring a targeted acquisition program that lets the 

 utility function as an energy service company and work on a per- 

 formance basis. So, there are a wide variety of ideas that our cus- 

 tomers have had. This different way of deUvering conservation 

 matches very well with what Randy just mentioned about the seg- 

 mentation and the new marketing approach. This is because we 

 don't have to have a one-size-fits-all conservation delivery approach 

 £m5anore. 



If we have five or ten different segments that we're going to be 

 selling to, we can offer different products to different segments. So, 

 if one segment likes the tiered rate approach, they can elect to be 

 in that segment. Another segment might like the centrahzed pro- 

 grams approach because they don't have the capabiUty to develop 

 programs on their own, and there would be a whole range in be- 

 tween. 



So, actually, in terms of people being demoralized, I think John 

 Carr said it earlier, it's actually quite the opposite. It's a very excit- 

 ing time and, believe it or not, there are people at BonneviUe who 

 sincerely are committed to getting this conservation resource. They 

 see that now is the time to do it and they understand that they 

 need to chsinge. 



So at this point we're too busy trying to get it done to get worried 

 about whether we have a job tomorrow. 



Mr. DeFazio. Okay. In terms of this approach, the new decen- 

 tr£ilized approach, I assume that — are you assigning goals or tar- 

 gets for acquisition to the different sub-areas so that you can meas- 

 ure them against — I mean, now they would have a goal of — instead 

 of there just sort of being a lot of proposals that come in to the 

 central office, and we don't know exactly why they didn't happen, 

 but a lot of them don't happen. 



Are you going to break it down by areas and goals by 



Ms. HiCKEY. Each area has a megawatt target and a cost target 

 and they are basiccdly fi-ee to move money around fi-om sector to 

 sector to try to achieve that megawatt target at that cost level. I 

 think it's beginning to work well for us. Some of the proposals that 

 we had a difficult time with in the central office were the energy 

 service company proposals in the competitive bid, and those are 

 now being worked on in the areas, which is a more appropriate 

 place for the decisions to be made. 



