PoolCo, Bilateral Trading, and Technology

Fortnightly Magazine - March 15 1995
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Alex Henney is associated with Energy Economic Engineering Ltd. in London, and has consulted in many countries. As early as February 1987, Henney advocated competitively restructuring the electricity supply industry and incorporating a pool as a real-time spot market. He is the author of A Study of the Privatisation of the Electricity Supply Industry in England and Wales.

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Last year, the Norwegian Market Co. decided to stick with bilateral trading and a spot market. I advised the British gas regulator to facilitate bilateral trading, and the British electricity regulator to stick with "PoolCo."

That is not to imply that the English pool does not have problems. It does. But to understand them (em and more importantly, how to avoid them and do better next time (em one has to look at how the pool was developed and work out the lessons of experience.

The fire and thunder of the U.S. debate lead me to wonder whether the theological point escapes me, or I am unduly eclectic and broad church. Alternatively, can it be that some of the participants in the U.S. debate do not know what they are talking about? Or perhaps some know only too well and have agendas for making money (em not out of "fierce competitive" markets and mother's blueberry pie, but out of obfuscated market imperfections.

Emotive armwaving from the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX), caricaturing a PoolCo as a monopoly with a "big appetite" across two pages of ill-informed assertions, adds to heat but not to light.

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