By Patrick O’Grady | Phoenix Business Journal
Steven Murray has a vision of an Arizona energy market where consumers get their power from whatever source they feel is best.
Murray is the president of Direct Energy Residential, the Houston-based company that provides sales to homeowners in deregulated utility markets. They’re also the company that’s opening a new call center in Tempe that’s going to hire 300 people.
Murray said he likes the Phoenix area from the perspective of finding talent for his centers. He likes it a little more as a market for his company, which has been talking with various people from the Governor’s Office of Energy Policy to the Arizona Corporation Commission in evangalizing the free market for energy sales.
“The more we looked at it, the more we thought, ‘Why doesn’t Arizona have a competitive market?’” he said.
Deregulation isn’t a new concept in Arizona. The state had been one of the first in line in the late 1990s to see if it was a viable strategy. Then California stepped into the market, and stepped into a bigger mess with rolling blackouts and a utility company bankruptcy.
If you’d like to discuss energy issues, contact Court Rich, Co-Chair of Rose Law Group’s Renewable Energy Department at crich@roselawgroup.com
