Back in the days before deregulation, the only players in the utility industry were integrated companies -- companies that owned generation, transmission, and distribution facilities. They not only generated the electricity, they transported it and delivered it to your home and business.

Now comes deregulation causing the formation of a host of new companies and organizational structures, of which the power marketers are the fastest growing. They purchase blocks of electricity from whomever will sell it, and they resell it to large commercial and industrial users by using the existing transmission and distribution grids.

During 1996, power marketers provided 231.8 million megawatt hours of energy - energy equivalent to the needs of 22.1 million homes. Last year, during just the first nine months of 1999, this group provided 1.9 billion megawatt hours of energy - energy equivalent to the needs of 243 million homes.