Electric Sales and Revenue 2002

Year in Review, 2002

In 2002, full-service sales of electricity to "bundled" ultimate consumers increased to 3,290 billion kilowatthours. The increase reflects the nation’s economic recovery in late 2001, and continuing into 2002, with a slight rebound in industrial consumption related to the slowdown in the economy in 2001, as well as the transfer of substantial energy consumption (45.2 million megawatthours) to unbundled energy service provided by the California Department of Water Resources (CDWR) during California’s energy crisis.¹ Unbundled sales in deregulated markets, including sales by the CDWR, increased to 172 billion kilowatthours and were approximately 5.0 percent of total sales.² Total revenue from sales to bundled consumers decreased by 0.5 percent from $233 billion to $232 billion. Total revenue in 2002 from both bundled and unbundled consumers was up slightly from $247 to $250 billion.

Average revenue per kilowatthour decreased for all sectors in 2002, after increases for the two prior years. For the bundled residential sector, average revenue per kilowatthour decreased by 2.6 percent to 8.34 cents for bundled consumers and 8.46 cents for both bundled and unbundled combined.³ Similar decreases in average revenue per kilowatthour were experienced by the other consumer sectors as well.

Endnotes

   ¹ Effective January 17, 2001, the California State legislature authorized the California Department of Water Resources (CDWR) to purchase wholesale power for California retail consumers. This action was a result of the very high wholesale power prices and power shortages experienced in California in 2000 and 2001, and associated financial problems encountered by the State’s large investor-owned utilities. Data for 2001 and 2002 related to the CDWR’s intervention into the California electricity crisis are considered by the EIA to be unbundled retail energy sales by the CDWR with the major investor-owned utilities providing delivery services only to affected consumers. Therefore, these data are carried in Tables C1 through C4, and in File3 in the database file. The EIA’s representation of these data as retail sales by the CDWR was agreed to by the CDWR and the major California investor-owned utilities. However, users of the data should be aware that substantial definitional differences exist with regard to the type of transaction (wholesale or retail) between the CDWR, the State’s investor-owned utilities, and the California ratepayers.

   ² Sales to ultimate consumers in deregulated markets, including revenue received by distribution utilities for delivery services in those markets, are shown in Appendix C for “Electric Sales and Revenue 2000” and in the spreadsheet Tables C1 through C5 for 2001 and 2002.

   ³ Combining unbundled residential consumers with bundled residential consumers further increases the average revenue per kilowatthour because States that have deregulated their markets have done so precisely because they had higher than average costs of electric power (i.e., California, Pennsylvania, New York).