Draft Electricity Plan to Get Endorsement : Deregulation: A broad coalition will voice support today for the PUC proposal calling for all power to be sold in a central wholesale pool.

The broadest coalition yet to emerge in the tangled debate over electric-utility deregulation today will endorse the state Public Utility Commission’s majority proposal to limit competition to a wholesale market.

More than 80 utilities and groups representing small businesses, consumers, environmentalists, labor and minorities will throw their weight behind the draft policy favored by three of the four PUC commissioners. That proposal calls for the sale of all power in a central wholesale pool, at least for the first two years of deregulation, rather than retail-level sales--direct deals between power plants and consumers.

“This is not a strong vote of confidence in every detail of the proposal, but of the direction it has staked out,” said Ralph Cavanagh, energy program director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group.

However, several major players in deregulation declined to join the new coalition, among them Southern California Edison Co., Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and Toward Utility Rate Normalization, a consumer group, and the California Large Energy Consumers Assn.

After more than two years of discussions, the majority PUC proposal and a rival retail-sales proposal put forward by PUC Commissioner Jessie J. Knight Jr. were released by the commission in May. After public hearings and ad hoc workshops, the PUC is expected to vote on a final policy in the fall.

“Now there is enough of a critical mass of people who are tired of sniping at each other,” Cavanagh said Friday.

San Diego Gas & Electric Co. and, for the first time, municipal utilities around the state--including the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power--have endorsed the majority proposal.

Other supporters include the Union of Concerned Scientists, San Diego Economic Development Corp., the Greenlining Coalition and such occasional adversaries during previous hearings as energy efficiency expert Amory B. Lovins and William Hogan, a Harvard Kennedy School public policy professor who has frequently advised the commission over the past year.

“There are a lot of things in the Knight proposal that are good for consumers,” said Michael Shames, executive director of Utility Consumers Action Network, a San Diego-based group, “a lot of things in the majority proposal that are odious, but we are willing to sit down and try to work it out.” UCAN has come to believe that small business and residential consumers would be hard put to compete with large industrial users in a market deregulated down to the retail level, Shames said.

But Michael P. Florio, a TURN senior attorney, said, “We don’t see anything in the [majority] proposal that’s going to lead to lower rates . . . , and that’s what we thought this whole exercise was about.”

Ironically, Edison, one of the strongest advocates of a wholesale plan, has not joined the coalition.

“We’re strongly supportive, obviously, of the principles,” Edison spokesman Tom Higgins said. “We just didn’t sign on because we didn’t want the thing to seem so imbalanced, as utility driven.”

Higgins denied industry reports of an agreement between Edison and the California Manufacturers Assn., a strong proponent of retail sales. But Higgins added, “We’re trying to keep things cool.”