ABSTRACT
Summary: Electric power restructuring offers a major change to the vertically integrated utility monopoly. The change manifests the main part of engineers’ efforts to reshape the three components of today’s vertically integrated monopoly: generation, distribution and transmission. In a restructured environment, the main tasks of these three components will remain the same as before, however, to comply with FERC orders, new types of unbundling, coordination and rules are to be established to guarantee competition and non-discriminatory open access to all users. This chapter will find answers to several questions including, why is the restructuring needed? How is the restructuring implemented? Topics such as major components of restructuring models, market power, stranded costs, transmission congestion contracts, contracts for differences and transmission pricing will be touched in this chapter. In this chapter, we focus on restructuring process in the Unites States and a few other countries, discuss some of the proposals in detail and present comparisons between proposals. We present these subjects in a simplified manner to enable readers with different backgrounds to acquire ample knowledge as related to electric industry restructuring and to provide a general idea on how restructuring is being implemented.
