Electricity market wholesale

The UK wholesale electricity market was liberalized when the industry was privatized in 1990-91. By abolishing barriers to entry in generation and by allowing first large customers (above 1 MW demand, from 1990) and then medium customers (above 100 kW demand, from 1994) freedom to choose supplier, the government allowed the electricity market to function more or less like other commodity markets. Generation ownership... 

In combination, the various FERC orders provided the impetus for deregulation in the U.S. wholesale electricity market, and aided in deregulation of state-regulated retail markets. Note that the FERC cannot actually require retail competition, since the retail markets are the purview of state public utility commissions. However, in many states, utility commissions or legislatures have introduced retail competition, in which individual consumers or firms can choose... 

The advent of competition has virtually transformed the industry in evei y aspect, including its name. In the not too recent past, the industry was referred to as the electric utility industry. Today, given its significantly wide and numerous participants, it is more appropriate to refer to the industry as the electric power industry. This new power industry has new power generation and sales participants with names such as qualifying facilities, exempt wholesale generators, merchant facilities, small power production facilities, power marketers, and sales aggregators. 

United States in 1998) from coal (56%), nuclear (20%), natural gas (11%), hydro (8%), oil (3%), biomass (1.5%), geothermal (0.2%), wind (0.1%), and solar (0.02%). Recently, wholesale and some retail markets have been unbundled, allowing competitors to sell electrons with the monopoly utility or municipality providing the transmission service. Open-access restructuring gives customers choices and creates a commodity market in which the lowest-cost electricity wins market share at the expense of higher-cost alternatives. 

The electricity mdustiy is m the midst of a transition from a vertically integrated and regulated monopoly to an entity in a competitive market where retail customers choose the suppliers of their electricity. The change started in 1978, when the Public Utility Regulatoiy Act (PURPA) made it possible for nonutility power generators to enter the wholesale market. 

Energy from biomass is hardly commercially viable for any technological option at the current price levels of competing conventional alternatives in the Netherlands. Representative price levels for the production and supply of these alternatives are presented in Table 2. Due to the cunent process of liberalisation of both the electricity and the gas markets, prices are expected to drop substantially. Regarding electricity the decrease may lie in the order of 20 - 25%, whilst the gas wholesale prices may become 10-15% lower. Therefore, utilisation of renewable electricity from biomass is stimulated by financial and fiscal incentives to achieve the Dutch COj-targets. These measures should be placed in the above-mentioned framework of the Dutch policy to achieve an improvement of 10% energy supply from renewables in 2010,... 

A small manufacturer of a little-known brand may find it difiScult to attract supply chain members for its existing or new product offerings. Such a manufacturer lacks market power when entering supply chain negotiations. Also, since financial resources determine a manufacturer s ability to perform marketing functions internally, small manufacturers usually cannot afford to distribute directly to retailers or geographically dispersed industrial customers and must rely on wholesalers. Furthermore, in some locations acceptable middlemen may not be available in every line of trade. Firms in this situation include some manufacturers of electrical supplies and small hand tools. 

In 2013, wholesale power rates in the United States have been in the 3 to 5 cents/kWh range, except during peak power periods. Thus, nuclear power, from existing plants, would appear to be quite competitive economically, with the current power rates. Obviously new plants, with the high capital cost, if amortized over a 30-year period, do not appear economical in the present electrical supply market. However, it is quite likely that the average wholesale electrical prices will increase in the next several years, to be more in line with the prices in the prerecessions days (before 2008). 

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