How important are electric rates to a business?

It would take a day to count the ways.

More than 200 people, from business owners and executives to economists and engineers, attended the second Northern Ohio Energy Management Conference at the John S. Knight Convention Center in Akron on Wednesday.

A daylong agenda featured speakers and a panel discussion in the morning, and workshops on how to save money in the afternoon.

But the common thread throughout the event was the question of what will happen to electric rates on Jan. 1, 2009. That's when rate plans for three of Ohio's four investor-owned utilities including Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp. are set to expire.

The rates were frozen in 1999 by Ohio lawmakers hoping to allow for competition between suppliers and lowering customers' bills. But competition never developed because no one has been able to beat what utilities now pay for power.

There is some fear that when the rate stabilization plan is lifted, Ohio could see price spikes like those that occurred in Maryland (a 72 percent increase) and Illinois (rates are up 50 percent.)

Mark Shanahan, energy adviser to Gov. Ted Strickland, was at Wednesday's conference to push the governor's proposal for avoiding that possibility.

Strickland wants to change the way electric utilities charge customers, and to require that at least 25 percent of electricity sold in Ohio by 2025 be generated by alternative technologies, including clean coal, new nuclear power technologies, fuel cells and renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power.

FirstEnergy has countered that the governor's complex plan could add new expenses, making it harder to protect consumers from significant price increases.

David Blank, FirstEnergy's vice president for rates and reg ulatory affairs, told attendees that while no one knows what the market prices are going to be in 2009, ''We believe there will not be a major impact from changes in prices, based on reactions we've seen to price changes in other goods and services over the last period of time.''

The conference, hosted by MAGNET (Manufacturing Advocacy & Growth Network), settled into a series of practical seminars by afternoon.

Attendees could learn about savings opportunities within the current rate structure, energy efficiency techniques and case studies of manufacturers that adopted ''green'' technology.