In Re TXU Electric Co.

Tomorrow, January 1, 2002, retail markets for the sale of electricity in Texas will open for competition.1 The development of those markets will be shaped profoundly and irreversibly by the charges to retailers set by the Public Utility Commission. The Commission has reduced these charges in some markets by ordering several incumbent utilities to reverse their efforts to mitigate and accelerate the recovery of the stranded costs they were estimated to have in 1998 because the Commission now estimates that those costs have since fallen. The Commission’s authority to order this reversal is…