As deregulation dawns, electric utilities are awakening to the fact that power quality counts with many a customer-and counts for a lot. Even now, the groundwork is being laid worldwide for a new type of service contract between a utility and its large industrial or commercial clients. In brief, the utility promises to supply its customer's operations with power above a certain level of "quality", and the customer promises to buy power from no-one else for as long as the contract lasts-a valuable concession now that retail wheeling has clients in those categories picking and choosing among suppliers in the electric power industry.