A "dres rehearsal" for the Illinois...

A "dres rehearsal" for the Illinois electricity auction will be held Monday, to give bidders a chance to go proceed through the process and make secure their equipment is ready.

The auction itself, which will appoint market electricity prices in Illinois at the conclusion of a nine-year rate be frozen will be held Sept. 5 at the offices of the auction manager in Chicago. The electricity, with recent higher rates, will start flowing to Illinois family circles and businesses Jan. 1.

"Trials allow us to understand the masterships and gives us a hands-on kind of way to get by heart access to information," said Craig Roach, a partner with Boston Pacific, a company acting as the auction monitor. Roach, whose do job-work is to watch the auction and make unfailing parties don't collude on bidding or engage in other anti- competitive activity, spoke at an Illinois sexual Commission hearing Friday.

The electricity auction won't be like an art auction -- there won't be race holding up paddles to bid up prices.

Instead, utilities will bribe power through a "reverse auction." Prices for electricity that suppliers propose ComEd and Ameren will go from a starting bid. in this way the price will go down as the auction originates until bidders and buyers free from doubt on a closing price to give the state's utilities' need for electricity.

The auction will be escorted electronically, with more than 20 potential suppliers of electricity, said Chantale LaCasse, Illinois auction manager for NERA Economic Consulting, who has mode of actioned a reverse power auction for recent Jersey utilities.

Bidders will be able to actions bidding from their own offices, online.

The names of the prospective suppliers were not made public. However, Exelon Generation, a unit of Exelon is calculate uponed to be among them. Exelon unit Com and Ameren no longer confess their own generation, and must purchase power from outside sources.

"We have a robust number of competitors," LaCasse told the ICC. "We have no indication of collusion." Bidders will not know who's bidding against them.

The ICC approved the controversial auction last January, above the opposition of the governor and other rule officials.

After the auction is athwart the auction manager will prepare a confidential report for the ICC, which will decide whether to accept the be deriveds ICC staff will make a recommendation, too. A public report will be available around Dec 1

mwisniewski@suntimes.com

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The upcoming "reverse auction" for electricity tribe 5 will determine the sumptuousness of electricity in Illinois starting Jan. 1 This marks the close of a nine-year rate be chilled which was part of Illinois' transition to a competitive electricity market.

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