On the first day of Commonwealth Edison`s customer choice program, 430 of the utility`s business customers, representing 700 million kWh in annual sales, opted for a new supplier.

Six suppliers are certified with the Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC) or registered with ComEd to do business in northern Illinois. They include CILCO, Illinois Power, MidAmerican, New Energy Midwest, Nicor Energy and Unicom Energy.

Customers with demand loads higher than 4 MW are eligible to choose their power suppliers. ComEd conducted a lottery on July 13 to select additional customers to bring the total to 42,000. ComEd received more than 27,000 requests for customer usage and billing information. "This means that customers and suppliers are gathering the information necessary to make decisions," said Arlene Juracek, ComEd`s open access implementation vice president. "Analyzing their usage is one of the first steps before deciding on a new supplier.

"We are very encouraged by this high level of early interest," she continued. "While many are being cautious and taking a wait and see attitude, we expect a robust market."

Similarly, suppliers have been fairly cautious in their approach. "It`s the opposite of California where everyone rushed into the market and then dropped out," said Kevin Brookins, electric supplier services manager. "We believe we will have a strong set of competitors." Numerous suppliers, in addition to the aforementioned six, are reportedly near completion of the certification and registration process.

The Customer Choice Law Illinois enacted in 1997 prescribed a phased-in process with more than one-third of non-residential load being eligible to choose suppliers on Oct. 1, 1999. By Dec. 31, 2000, all non-residential customers are expected to have choice. Residential choice is scheduled to begin by May 2002. Electricity delivery, of course, remains with ComEd, which serves some 3.4 million customers.