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Author:
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ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 77
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Book Description
The term ''transition costs'' describes the potential revenue shortfall (or welfare loss) a utility (or other actor) may experience through government-initiated deregulation of electricity generation. The potential for transition costs arises whenever a regulated industry is subject to competitive market forces as a result of explicit government action. Federal and state proposals to deregulate electricity generation sparked a national debate on transition costs in the electric-utility industry. Industry-wide transition cost estimates range from about $20 billion to $500 billion. Such disparate estimates raise important questions on estimation methods for decision makers. This report examines different approaches to estimating transition costs. The study has three objectives. First, we discuss the concept of transition cost. Second, we identify the major cost categories included in transition cost estimates and summarize the current debate on which specific costs are appropriately included in these estimates. Finally, we identify general and specific estimation approaches and assess their strengths and weaknesses. We relied primarily on the evidentiary records established at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the California Public Utilities Commission to identify major cost categories and specific estimation approaches. We also contacted regulatory commission staffs in ten states to ascertain estimation activities in each of these states. We refined a classification framework to describe and assess general estimation options. We subsequently developed and applied criteria to describe and assess specific estimation approaches proposed by federal regulators, state regulators, utilities, independent power companies, and consultants.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 77
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Book Description
The term ''transition costs'' describes the potential revenue shortfall (or welfare loss) a utility (or other actor) may experience through government-initiated deregulation of electricity generation. The potential for transition costs arises whenever a regulated industry is subject to competitive market forces as a result of explicit government action. Federal and state proposals to deregulate electricity generation sparked a national debate on transition costs in the electric-utility industry. Industry-wide transition cost estimates range from about $20 billion to $500 billion. Such disparate estimates raise important questions on estimation methods for decision makers. This report examines different approaches to estimating transition costs. The study has three objectives. First, we discuss the concept of transition cost. Second, we identify the major cost categories included in transition cost estimates and summarize the current debate on which specific costs are appropriately included in these estimates. Finally, we identify general and specific estimation approaches and assess their strengths and weaknesses. We relied primarily on the evidentiary records established at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the California Public Utilities Commission to identify major cost categories and specific estimation approaches. We also contacted regulatory commission staffs in ten states to ascertain estimation activities in each of these states. We refined a classification framework to describe and assess general estimation options. We subsequently developed and applied criteria to describe and assess specific estimation approaches proposed by federal regulators, state regulators, utilities, independent power companies, and consultants.
Author: Lester W. Baxter
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Cost accounting
Languages : en
Pages : 76
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Author: Lester Baxter
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 89
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Utilities regulators can use a variety of approaches to calculate transition costs. We categorized these approaches along three dimensions. The first dimension is the use of administrative vs. market procedures to value the assets in question. Administrative approaches use analytical techniques to estimate transition costs. Market valuation relies on the purchase price of particular assets to determine their market values. The second dimension concerns when the valuation is done, either before or after the restructuring of the electricity industry. The third dimension concerns the level of detail involved in the valuation, what is often called top-down vs. bottom-up valuation. This paper discusses estimation approaches, criteria to assess estimation methods, specific approaches to estimating transition costs, factors that affect transition-cost estimates, strategies to address transition costs, who should pay transition costs, and the integration of cost recovery with competitive markets.
Author: Eric Hirst
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Abstract The US electric-utility industry is in the midst of major changes. These changes include deintegration of the industry and substantial increases in competition. A major consequence of these changes is the exposure of transition costs. These costs, which amount to $100-$200 billion nationwide, reflect the differences between regulated prices for electricity generation and the prices that might occur in fully competitive power markets. The large financial stakes, equivalent to nearly the total value of US electric-utility common stock, guarantee controversy. Debates occur over transition-cost amounts; analytical and market methods to estimate these costs; the assets and liabilities to include in such calculations; the assumptions used in developing these estimates; approaches that can be used to offset some of these costs; the allocation of the remaining costs among utility shareholders, different classes of retail customers, independent power producers and other wholesale suppliers, and taxpayers; and appropriate cost-recovery mechanisms.
Author: Ahmad Faruqui
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9780792376002
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 404
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Book Description
Electricity Pricing In Transition is written to address the new issues facing utilities, retailers, regulators, and customers in the changing electricity market. It is organized into five sections. Section I deals with the new restructured organization that has emerged from yesterday's vertically integrated, regulated monopoly company. Section II deals with issues in competitive pricing. Section III reviews the role of demand response and product design in today's chaotic marketplace. Given the single importance of California's energy crisis and the fact that it will be studied for years to come, Section IV is devoted to studying the lessons learned from this crisis. The final section of the book deals with markets and regulations. This book will provide practitioners with guidance on how to avoid the major pitfalls in pricing electricity while the market is in transition by drawing upon the insights and lessons learned from the experience of others that are documented in this book.
Author: Kenneth Rose (Ph. D.)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Electric utilities
Languages : en
Pages : 126
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Author:
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ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 72
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Transition costs are the potential monetary losses that electric- utility shareholders, ratepayers, or other parties might experience because of structural changes in the electricity industry. Regulators, policy analysts, utilities, and consumer groups have proposed a number of strategies to address transition costs, such as immediately opening retail electricity markets or delaying retail competition. This report has 3 objectives: identify a wide range of strategies available to regulators and utilities; systematically examine effects of strategies; and identify potentially promising strategies that may provide benefits to more than one set of stakeholders. The many individual strategies are grouped into 6 major categories: market actions, depreciation options, rate-making actions, utility cost reductions, tax measures, and other options. Of the 34 individual strategies, retail ratepayers have primary or secondary responsibility for paying transition costs in 19 of the strategies, shareholders in 12, wheeling customers in 11, taxpayers in 8, and nonutility suppliers in 4. Most of the strategies shift costs among different segments of the economy, although utility cost reductions can be used to offset transition costs. Most of the strategies require cooperation of other parties, including regulators, to be implemented successfully; financial stakeholders must be engages in negotiations that hold the promise of shared benefits. Only by rejecting ''winner-take-all'' strategies will the transition-cost issue be expeditiously resolved.
Author:
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ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 119
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The issue of possibly unrecoverable cost incurred by a utility, or 'stranded costs, ' has emerged as a major obstacle to developing a competitive generation market. Stranded or transition costs are defined as costs incurred by a utility to serve its customers that were being recovered in rates but are no longer due to availability of lower-priced alternative suppliers. The idea of 'stranded cost, ' and more importantly arguments for its recovery, is a concept with little basis in economic theory, legal precedence, or precedence in other deregulated industries. The main argument recovery is that the ''regulatory compact'' requires it. This is based on the misconception that the regulator compact is simply: the utility incurs costs on behalf of its customers because of the ''obligation to serve'' so, therefore, customers are obligated to pay. This is a mischaracterization of what the compact was and how it developed. Another argument is that recovery is required for economic efficiency. This presumes, however, a very narrow definition of efficiency based on preventing ''uneconomic'' bypass of the utility and that utilities minimize costs. A broader definition of efficiency and the likelihood of cost inefficiencies in the industry suggest that the cost imposed on customers from inhibiting competition could exceed the gains from preventing uneconomic bypass. Both these issues are examined in this paper.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 23
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Progress is evident as the restructuring debate in the U.S. electricity industry completes its third year. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission released a final rule on transmission open access-a key element to facilitate more efficient wholesale markets. The majority of states have initiated investigations or discussions on restructuring retail markets. Yet hurdles remain in formulating and implementing state-level restructuring proposals. Perhaps foremost among these hurdles is the issue of transition costs (the potential monetary losses experienced by utilities, consumers, and other economic actors as a result of government initiatives to transform electricity generation from a regulated to a competitive market). Transition costs are approximately equal to the difference between the embedded cost for generation services under traditional cost-of-service regulation and the competitive-market price for power. When government takes action to open current monopoly franchises to multiple generation providers and the competitive-market price falls below embedded generation costs, then transition costs will arise. Transition costs will include one or more of the following four classes of costs: (1) assets, primarily utility-owned power plants; (2) liabilities, primarily long-term power-purchase and fuel-supply contracts; (3) regulatory assets, including deferred expenses and costs that regulators allow utilities to place on their balance sheets; and (4) public-policy programs, such as energy efficiency, low-income programs, and research and development. What is at issue in the transition-cost debate? The debate turns on four questions: (1) How large are the potential transition costs from restructuring? (2) How are these costs estimated? (3) What, if anything, might be done to address these costs? (4) Who will ultimately pay for any remaining costs and how? This paper summarizes some of the key results from a project at ORNL that addresses these four questions.
Author: Kenneth Rose
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 106
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