CONTACT INFORMATION

Excelergy
www.excelergy.com

CAMBRIDGE, MA., October 21, 1999 - Excelergy Corporation, the technology leader for the deregulated energy industry, today announced the release of an XML (Extensible Markup Language) standard business library for use by participants in energy choice. The first company to present information on XML standards for the deregulated retail energy industry, Excelergy is promoting "open" communications among customers, energy service providers and distribution companies in the competitive energy environment.

"A widespread adoption of an XML standard will enable a frictionless entry into the retail energy market," said Cary Bullock, president of Excelergy. "XML is a language that opens up the movement of information among trading partners. It encourages new entrants into the deregulated market and enables established companies to leverage their existing systems and EDI processes. Excelergy invites others in the energy community to join us in building upon this standards-based foundation."

XML is a data modeling language that enables information to be transmitted in a prescribed format among parties over the Internet. Utilizing XML lowers the cost of back office transaction processing by using the Internet rather than a proprietary value added network (VAN) to transmit data. Excelergy believes that by releasing these standards, participants in energy deregulation will adopt uniform rules that will lower some of the barriers to entry and decrease costs, therefore creating a more competitive marketplace.

"It is nice to see a first step towards standard communications over the Internet." said Guerry Waters, vice president, EIS at Meta Group. "Proprietary VANs are expensive and require in-depth technical understanding for many trading partners, but the Internet can be quickly adopted and accessed by anyone in a cost effective manner."

"Excelergy is one of our newest members and we are very excited to see them offer this new technology to the marketplace," said Craig Goodman, president of the National Energy Marketers Association (NEMA). "The more open the technology platform, the easier it will be to facilitate competition and this is NEMAs overriding goal."

"As a Sponsoring Member of CUBR and the Chair of CUBR's Standard Electronic Transactions (SET) Working Group, Excelergy has played an active role in the development of uniform business rules for the deregulated retail energy market and has been a driving force in the development of uniform standard electronic transactions to implement the business rules," said Joelle Ogg of John & Hengerer, consultant for the CUBR. "Excelergy has repeatedly emphasized that uniform business rules are only the first step for developing a truly competitive retail market, with the other necessary component being workable, standardized electronic transactions, whether EDI or XML, developed, implemented, and modified as technology evolves."

"XML simply solves problems around exchanging data among disparate systems," said Chris Cazer, vice president of engineering at Excelergy. "Excelergy is presently utilizing XML to migrate our customers' legacy system data into our energy choice system, ABP 1200. We foresee that customers will soon be able to sign up for their energy supplier online, and all of the back office processes will seamlessly transmit that information between the trading partners using XML technology."

Excelergy defined partner interface processes (PIP) for the relevant transactions (e.g. enrollment, usage, and payment) for the deregulated energy space. The XML library contains vocabularies and document type definitions (DTDs) to enable interoperable data transactions among energy participants including suppliers and utilities. XML is an easy to use, "self-describing" language which facilitates the editing and manipulation of data.

The paper "XML for Retail Energy Transactions: A White Paper", highlighting the trading partner XML standard developed by Excelergy, is now available from Excelergy's web site. For information on XML standard business library, a listing of the XML vocabularies, to order a copy of the WhitePaper free of charge, then visit the Excelergy web site at www.excelergy.com.

Excelergy continues to work with leading organizations to adopt standards for the deregulated energy industry. Excelergy is: * founding member of Coalition for Uniform Business Rules (CUBR) www.cubr.org * vice chairman of Utilities Industry Group (UIG) www.uig.org* chairperson of the Deregulation Task Force of the Utility Industry Group (UIG)

About Excelergy
Excelergy helps energy participants succeed in the New Energy Economy. Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the company has rapidly become the leading provider of web-based customer information and transaction management solutions. Excelergy's momentum is fueled by its unique ability to Deliver the best tools, talent and technology available to the deregulated retail energy marketplace.

# # #