31.   Consumers will also be allowed to buy power through aggregators, who will group individual customers into larger blocks to negotiate better deals with power generation companies.

32.   Deregulation of electric companies in California in recent years forced many private utilities to sell generation facilities and to buy power on the spot market instead.

33.   Customers would be allowed to choose the company that generates their electricity or they could continue to buy power through their local utility.

34.   Despite the weakness of the dollar, Americans still have more than enough buying power to afford increasingly expensive imports.

35.   Edison maintains that the Senate bill will not make the company credit-worthy, which would put them back in the position of buying power.

36.   Entergy, however, has said it has had to switch from coal to other fuels or buy power from other producers.

37.   Even if consumers buy power from out of state, Edison would handle customer service and send out the bills.

38.   Essentially, the states would decide at what price they were willing to buy power and refuse to purchase once it tops that level.

39.   Even holding overall spending steady is a form of cutting the education budget because inflation means a certain erosion in buying power.

40.   Federal and state laws require Niagara Mohawk and other large regulated utilities to buy power from small independent producers in their service areas.