Testing share & load growth in competitive residential gas markets
- Boston Gas Company, MA (United States)
The residential market stands as the next frontier for natural gas unbundling. In California, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and elsewhere, states have introduced pilot programs and other unbundling efforts to target residential gas consumers. These efforts are hardly surprising. The residential market, presently dominated by the regulated local distribution companies, appears lucrative. In 1995, the residential sector of the U.S. natural gas industry consumed 4,736 trillion Btu of natural gas or 32 percent of all natural gas delivered by LDCs in that year. U.S. residential consumers accounted for $28.7 billion or 59 percent of the gas utility industry`s total revenues. Nevertheless, despite all the enthusiasm industry representatives have recently expressed in trade publications and public forums, the creation of a competitive residential market may prove a very slow process. Marketers appear cautious in taking the responsibility of serving residential consumers, and for very good reasons. Gaining a sizable portion of this market requires substantial investment in mass marketing, development of name recognition, acquisition of appropriate technology and employment of skillful personnel. Moreover, residential customers do not behave rationally in a {open_quotes}neoclassical{close_quotes} economic sense. They react not only to a price but to several qualitative factors that have yet to be studied by LDCs and marketers. This article offers results from creating a software program and model that answer two basic questions: (1) What share of the residential natural gas market can be realistically captured by non-regulated suppliers? (2) Will residential unbundling increase total throughput for gas utilities? If so, by how much?
- OSTI ID:
- 585216
- Journal Information:
- Fortnightly, Vol. 136, Issue 4; Other Information: PBD: 15 Feb 1998
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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