ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an understanding of what power marketers and their markets and services are, and looks at events and the near future of the power-marketing industry. Beginning in the late 1970s, Changes in the conditions of both the marketplace and the regulatory landscape began to erode the control of the utility-dominated power industry and opened the door for the power-marketing industry. Power marketing refers to wholesale and retail transactions of electric power by companies other than the regulated utilities that own the distribution lines. Power marketers may buy from utility and nonutility generators, as well as other power marketers, and at the wholesale level may sell to private and public utilities, other marketers, and resellers. As of September 2001, there were 497 independent power marketers and 167 affiliated power marketers registered with Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
