Understanding Energy Deregulation: What Every Business Needs to Know


Book Description

In a world where energy costs and sustainability are at the forefront of every business's agenda, understanding the complexities of energy deregulation is crucial. "Understanding Energy Deregulation: What Every Business Needs to Know" is an essential guide for business leaders, facility managers, and energy professionals seeking to navigate the evolving landscape of the energy market. Authored by a seasoned expert in the field, this comprehensive book delves into the intricacies of energy deregulation, offering clear explanations, actionable insights, and practical strategies. Whether you're a small business owner looking to cut costs or a large enterprise aiming to optimize energy efficiency, this book provides the knowledge and tools needed to make informed decisions. Key Features: Foundations of Energy Deregulation: Learn the history, principles, and benefits of energy deregulation and how it impacts your business. Comparing Energy Plans: Understand the various types of energy plans, including fixed, variable, and indexed plans, and how to choose the best one for your needs. Pricing Models: Explore the differences between Matrix and Custom pricing models and how they cater to businesses of different sizes and energy consumption levels. Rate Structures: Get an in-depth look at different rate structures such as stable rates, tiered rates, time-of-use pricing, and more. Learn how these structures can affect your energy costs and budgeting. Payment Options: Discover the pros and cons of prepaid and postpaid plans, and how to select the right payment method for your business. Common Challenges and Solutions: Identify common pitfalls in the deregulated energy market and learn how to overcome them with practical solutions. Case Studies and Real-World Examples: Gain insights from real businesses that have successfully navigated energy deregulation, providing you with practical lessons and inspiration. This book is more than just a guide; it's a roadmap to energy efficiency and cost savings. With clear, concise language and a wealth of practical information, this book empowers you to take control of your energy strategy and make decisions that benefit your bottom line and the environment. Whether you're new to energy deregulation or looking to deepen your understanding, this book is your go-to resource for navigating the complex and dynamic world of deregulated energy markets. Start your journey to smarter energy management today!







Electricity Deregulation


Book Description

The electricity market has experienced enormous setbacks in delivering on the promise of deregulation. In theory, deregulating the electricity market would increase the efficiency of the industry by producing electricity at lower costs and passing those cost savings on to customers. As Electricity Deregulation shows, successful deregulation is possible, although it is by no means a hands-off process—in fact, it requires a substantial amount of design and regulatory oversight. This collection brings together leading experts from academia, government, and big business to discuss the lessons learned from experiences such as California's market meltdown as well as the ill-conceived policy choices that contributed to those failures. More importantly, the essays that comprise Electricity Deregulation offer a number of innovative prescriptions for the successful design of deregulated electricity markets. Written with economists and professionals associated with each of the network industries in mind, this comprehensive volume provides a timely and astute deliberation on the many risks and rewards of electricity deregulation.




The California Electricity Crisis


Book Description




Markets for Power


Book Description

This timely study evaluates four generic proposals for allowing free market forces toreplace government regulation in the electric power industry and concludes that none of thederegulation alternatives considered represents a panacea for the performance failures associatedwith things as they are now. It proposes a balanced program of regulatory reform and deregulationthat promises to improve industry performance in the short run, resolve uncertainties about thecosts and benefits of deregulation, and positions the industry for more extensive deregulation inthe long run should interim experimentation with deregulation, structural, and regulatory reformsmake it desirable.The book integrates modern microeconomic theory with a comprehensive analysis ofthe economic, technical, and institutional characteristics of modern electrical power systems. Itemphasizes that casual analogies to successful deregulation efforts in other sectors of the economyare an inadequate and potentially misleading basis for public policy in the electric power industry,which has economic and technical characteristics that are quite different from those in otherderegulated industries.Paul L. Joskow is Professor of Economics at MIT, author of ControllingHospital Costs (MIT Press 1981) and coauthor with Martin L. Baughman and Dilip P. Kamat of ElectricPower in the United States (MIT Press 1979). Richard Schmalensee, also at MIT, is Professor ofApplied Economics, author of The Economics of Advertising and The Control of Natural Monopolies, andeditor of The MIT Press Series, Regulation of Economic Activity.




International Energy Markets


Book Description

This book is designed to provide the economic skills to make better management or policy decisions relating to energy. It requires a knowledge of calculus and contains a toolbox of models along with institutional, technological and historical information for oil, coal, electricity, and renewable energy resources.




Understanding Electric Utilities and De-Regulation


Book Description

Power interruptions of the scale of the North American Blackout of 2003 are rare, but they still loom as a possibility. Will the aging infrastructure fail because deregulated monopolies have no financial incentives to upgrade? Is centralized planning becoming subordinate to market forces? Understanding Electric Utilities and De-Regulation, Second Edition provides an updated, non-technical description that sheds light on the nature of the industry and the issues involved in its transition away from a regulated environment. The book begins by broadly surveying the industry, from a regulated utility structure to the major concepts of de-regulation to the history of electricity, the technical aspects, and the business of power. Then, the authors delve into the technologies and functions on which the industry operates; the many ways that power is used; and the various means of power generation, including central generating stations, renewable energy, and single-household size generators. The authors then devote considerable attention to the details of regulation and de-regulation. To conclude, one new chapter examines aging infrastructures and reliability of service, while another explores the causes of blackouts and how they can be prevented. Based on the authors' extensive experience, Understanding Electric Utilities and De-Regulation, Second Edition offers an up-to-date perspective on the major issues impacting the daily operations as well as the long-term future of the electric utilities industry.




Understanding Today's Natural Gas Business


Book Description

This 150-page detailed overview of the North American gas industry offers an insider's perspective on the fast-paced and unpredictable business of natural gas. Topics covered include natural gas origins, the physical system and how it's operated, market dynamics and players, risk management techniques, an up-to-date look at today's regulatory environment, and much more. The book is ideal for those new to the industry, as well as veterans who need a big picture perspective of the electric business. The book is easy-to-read, contains a number of charts and diagrams to help simplify complex industry concepts, and includes a glossary and list of acronyms.




Regulating Power: The Economics of Electrictiy in the Information Age


Book Description

Modem industrial society functions with the expectation that electricity will be available when required. By law, electric utilities have the obligation to provide electricity to customers in a "safe and adequate" manner. In exchange for this obligation, utilities are granted a monopoly right to provide electricity to customers within well-defmed service territories. However, utilities are not unfettered in their monopoly power; public utility commissions regulate the relationship between a utility and its customers and limit profits to a "fair rate of return on invested capital. " From its inception through the late 1970s, the electric utility industry's opera tional paradigm was to continue marketing electricity to customers and to build power plants to meet customer needs. This growth was facilitated by a U. S. energy policy predicated upon the assumption that sustained electric growth was causally linked to social welfare (Lovins, 1977). The electric utility industry is now in transition from a vertically integrated monopoly to a more competitive market. Of the three primary components (generation, transmission, and distribution) of the traditional vertically integrated monopoly, generation is leading this transformation. The desired outcome is a more efficient market for the provision of electric service, ultimately resulting in lower costs to customers. This book focuses on impediments to this transformation. In partiCUlar, it argues that information control is a form of market power that inhibits the evolution of the market. The analysis is presented within the context of the transformation of the U. S.




Electricity Market Reform


Book Description

Since the late 1980s, policy makers and regulators in a number of countries have liberalized, restructured or "deregulated their electric power sector, typically by introducing competition at the generation and retail level. These experiments have resulted in vastly different outcomes - some highly encouraging, others utterly disastrous. However, many countries continue along the same path for a variety of reasons. Electricity Market Reform examines the most important competitive electricity markets around the world and provides definitive answers as to why some markets have performed admirably, while others have utterly failed, often with dire financial and cost consequences. The lessons contained within are direct relevance to regulators, policy makers, the investment community, industry, academics and graduate students of electricity markets worldwide. - Covers electicity market liberalization and deregulation on a worldwide scale - Features expert contributions from key people within the electricity sector