A Five-Point Plan For The Next Wave Of Electricity Restructuring

Deck: 

The monopoly utility model was once expansive and revolutionary. Now, it is contracting and preservationist.

Fortnightly Magazine - May 2016
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Thirty years ago in Public Utilities Fortnightly, we proposed a Ten-Point Plan for a competitive electricity industry.1 Much of the plan has been realized:

• More than two-fifths of all electricity production comes from non-utility generators, NUGs, compared to less than one-tenth prior to the 1990s.2

• The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has guided the wholesale market to almost total reliance on market pricing and widespread regional dispatch.

• Non-discriminatory transmission access is customary and, in much of the country, is managed by regional transmission organizations, RTOs.

• One-third of national electricity consumption is accounted for by the fourteen jurisdictions that have unbundled delivery and generation and allow near-universal retail customer choice at the retail level.3,4

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