42 U.S.C. § 16451 — Definitions

This section defines terms used throughout this part of the law. 1. Affiliate: A company's "affiliate" is any company where 5 percent or more of the outstanding voting shares are owned, controlled, or held with voting power, directly or indirectly, by that company. 2. Associate company: A company's "associate company" is any company in the same holding company system as it. 3. Commission: "Commission" means the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. 4. Company: A "company" is a corporation, partnership, association, joint stock company, business trust, or any organized group of people — incorporated or not — or a receiver, trustee, or other liquidating agent for any of those. 5. Electric utility company: An "electric utility company" is any company that owns or operates facilities used to generate, transmit, or distribute electric energy for sale. 6. Exempt wholesale generator and foreign utility company: These terms have the same meanings given in 15 U.S.C. §§ 79z–5a and 79z–5b, as those sections existed the day before this part's effective date. 7. Gas utility company: A "gas utility company" is any company that owns or operates facilities distributing natural or manufactured gas at retail for heat, light, or power — not counting distribution only in enclosed portable containers, or distribution to the company's own tenants or employees for their own use, not for resale. 8. Holding company: This term has two parts. First, it's any company that directly or indirectly owns, controls, or holds voting power over 10 percent or more of a public-utility company's (or its holding company's) outstanding voting securities. Second, it's anyone the Commission determines, after notice and a hearing, exercises a controlling influence — directly or indirectly, alone or with others — over a public-utility company's or holding company's management or policies, if subjecting that person to this part's obligations is necessary or appropriate to protect utility customers' rates. Excluded from this term: a bank, savings association, or trust company (or their operating subsidiaries) holding voting power over these securities only as loan collateral, as a fiduciary in the ordinary course of business, or for liquidation purposes tied to a prior loan, held no more than two years; and a broker or dealer holding voting power over these securities only because they aren't beneficially owned by the broker or dealer and are subject to customers' voting instructions, or because they were acquired within the last 12 months in the ordinary course of underwriting business with a genuine intent to distribute them. 9. Holding company system: This means a holding company together with its subsidiary companies. 10. Jurisdictional rates: These are rates the Commission has accepted or set for interstate electric energy transmission, interstate wholesale electric energy sales, interstate natural gas transportation, and interstate natural gas resale for ultimate domestic, commercial, industrial, or other consumption. 11. Natural gas company: This is a person who transports natural gas in interstate commerce, or sells it in interstate commerce for resale. 12. Person: This means an individual or a company. 13. Public utility: This is any person who owns or operates facilities used to transmit electric energy in interstate commerce, or to sell electric energy at wholesale in interstate commerce. 14. Public-utility company: This means an electric utility company or a gas utility company. 15. State commission: This is any state (or municipal, or other state political subdivision) commission, board, agency, or officer — whatever it's called — that has jurisdiction under state law to regulate public utility companies. 16. Subsidiary company: A holding company's "subsidiary company" is, first, any company where 10 percent or more of the outstanding voting securities are directly or indirectly owned, controlled, or held with voting power by that holding company. Second, it's anyone the Commission determines, after notice and a hearing, is subject to a controlling influence, directly or indirectly, by that holding company (alone or with others), if subjecting that person to this part's subsidiary-company obligations is necessary for the rate protection of utility customers. 17. Voting security: This is any security that currently entitles its owner or holder to vote on the direction or management of a company's affairs.