1.   At the same time, large corporations are now generating their own power and completely bypassing the formerly dominant local utility.

2.   Among its requests are a change in the way its corporate income tax is determined and the right to bypass local utilities to buy electricity from the cheapest source.

3.   And energy deregulation, which mandates that local utilities will have to deliver power from competing sources across their existing grids, is now making that choice possible.

4.   As a result, local utilities have been hooking up, as Consolidated Edison is in the process of doing with Northeast Utilities.

5.   As previously reported, timetables at several local utilities lag that date.

6.   Ask your local utility if they provide rebates.

7.   At home, Perrin avoids tapping into the local utility, which simply trades pollution from a tailpipe for pollution from a power plant stack.

8.   At night, solar homes in San Diego can switch to power from the local utility.

9.   Average power bills subsequently tripled as the local utility passed along its daily costs to customers.

10.   Before that, users had no choice except their local utility.