May 7, 2001


During the week of May 7, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is holding public hearings in several communities served by SCE soliciting customer comment about how the commission's recently announced rate increase should be applied to various customer groups.  The CPUC has already determined that two groups will be exempt from the 3-cent per kilowatt-hour increase--customers enrolled in SCE's C.A.R.E. low-income program and customers who consume less than 130% of their baseline allocation.  The commission is currently designing how the rate increase will apply to other customers.

ROSEMEAD, Calif., May 7, 2001-We continue to believe that a comprehensive approach to resolving California's electricity crisis is needed.  Such an approach must include the following components:

  • A rate structure that addresses the increased costs of wholesale power while providing customers with predictable, affordable electricity pricing.
  • An adjustable rate structure that assures the financial community that it can invest with confidence in California's utilities because the massive undercollections of the past year will not recur.
  • The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission must do its job ensuring just and reasonable wholesale power rates by placing some controls on pricing until California's electricity markets are workably competitive.
  • A plan to return California's utilities to financial health so that we can resume our historic role on behalf of our customers and get the state out of the business of buying power.

SCE believes that the commission's final rate increase design must protect SCE's C.A.R.E. low-income customers from rate hikes and reward customers who conserve on energy use.

# # #

An Edison International company, Southern California Edison is one of the nation's largest electric utilities, serving more than 11 million people in a 50,000-square-mile area within central, coastal and Southern California.