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(Cont'd
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Two Electric Bills?
The reason consumers will need to know these terms is that they may
soon be buying each of these services from more than one company.
Generation utilities will no longer have ownership or control of
transmission and/or distribution facilities. Only the actual
electricity will be purchased from the generation companies, and under
the various proposals for restructuring, only the generation segment of
the industry would be deregulated. (Power plants would still obey
environmental and safety laws, but they would have fewer limitations on
where and at what prices they might sell their electricity.)
Transmission and distribution utilities would still be regulated,
and these companies would likely still have exclusive service
territories.
Competition would therefore take place only among the various
generation companies. They would sell their power directly to
consumers, and send it over lines built, maintained, and repaired by
the regulated transmission and distribution utilities.
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Retail Wheeling
Another term electric consumers may be hearing a lot is “retail
wheeling.” It is the phrase industry insiders use most often when
referring to changes in the industry.
Wheeling is when a utility tranmits electricity across its
lines on behalf of another utility.Wholesale Wheeling (which
takes place only across transmission lines) is commonplace today as a
means of effectively managing the generation and delivery of wholesale
electricity as a commodity.
Retail Wheeling, then, will mean the delivery of a generation
utility’s electricity across a distribution utility’s lines to the
end-use consumer.
Some questions raised in connection with retail wheeling are:
* How will it affect system reliability? *Who will be responsible
for providing electricity if the generation utility goes offline?
*How will it affect power quality (the ability of a utility to
deliver power at the right voltage and frequency)?
*How will the costs of transmission system upgrades be distributed?
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