Area Descriptions:
Page Description - this page contains information related to retail choice,
restructuring, and other matters associated with alternative energy provision to
end customers.
Retail Choice and Restructuring:
- Embrace Electric Competition or It's Deja Vu All Over Again -
by (The) NorthBridge Group -79 pages - Our nation strives for “reliable,
affordable, and environmentally sound energy,” but the electric industry
must confront enormous challenges to meet this goal. Construction and fuel
costs to generate electricity have increased dramatically, and proposed
Greenhouse Gas GHG legislation is expected to further boost costs. Over
time, the combination of decreasing GHG emissions targets and the nation’s
current carbon-intensive generation fleet is likely to create the need for
one of the most significant capital realignments in the industry’s history
(see Figure 1). At the same time, the electric industry is embroiled in a
debate about the relative merits of competition, and many believe that we
should return to the “good old days” of regulation. But we should not forget
that electric regulation has faced similar challenges in the more distant
past…and it failed. The 1970s was a time of huge increases in fuel costs,
substantial capital cost escalation, serious environmental concerns, and
unanticipated changes in customer demand. Regulation tried to tackle these
challenges with an administrative, command-and-control decision-making
process, but the result was a massive overbuild of baseload capacity,
skyrocketing rates, large shareholder disallowances, and huge cost overruns
paid by customers. In the end, the regulated response to the events of the
1970s and 1980s likely amounted to a mistake on the order of $200 billion or
more in today’s dollars and resulted in excess supply and high rates that
were felt for decades -
http://www.EnergyCollection.us/Energy-Regulators/Embrace-Electric-Competition.pdf
- Retail Resurgence - Beyond the meter technologies
challenge the utility monopoly -
http://www.EnergyCollection.us/Energy-Regulators/Retail-Resurgence.pdf
- Status of Electricity Restructuring by State -
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/page/restructuring/restructure_elect.html