Rate Shock: A Matter of If, or When?
In the near future, the majority of investor-owned electric utilities will request, and ultimately win, rate increases. What can utilities do to alter consumer perceptions of higher bills?
Pricing
The Future of Electric Competition: Concentrated Power
An analysis of competitive power markets finds that oligopolies are the end game for liberalized power markets.
The British wholesale power market is about to enter a new phase. Having enjoyed a long period of surplus capacity, the combination of the forced retirement of some nuclear plant and continued demand growth is likely to lead to a capacity shortage within the next three to four years, and it is by no means clear whether the market, as it currently operates, will be able to maintain secure supplies.
A Better Measure for Profitability
A new way to measure what matters most: how close a unit comes to meeting its total potential profit.
Approximately 65 percent of capacity additions in the last few years have been gas-fired, combined-cycle units. Recent market conditions have been hard on these new resources, which have suffered from significantly low capacity factors. A better metric would measure a unit's ability to capture peak prices while minimizing shoulder period and off-peak losses. Furthermore, it would measure the extent to which a unit dispatches according to favorable market conditions.
Retail Risk-Based Pricing
A new approach to rate design.
Customers with greater risk require greater working capital set-asides to address anomalous or unexpected events.