Several regions of the U.S. have sought to restructure the electric power industry by separating the potentially competitive generation sector from the natural monopoly functions of electricity transmission and distribution. Under this restructuring scheme, a central authority, which we will refer to as the independent system operator (ISO), is given control over both the transmission system an...

" …the price of electricity was found to be a significant determinant of electricity demand in most cases with the expected inverse relationship (higher prices mean less consumption).The results provided no evidence that the responsiveness of Ontario industrial demand to the price of electricity during time periods when demand is the strongest has strengthened since market opening except, perha...

increasing overall liberalization and improving reliability indexes are the two prime but often conflicting objectives of electricity markets. proper embedding of regulatory intervention of price caps provides an effective means to tradeoff between these two objectives. surprisingly, in the context of the infinitely repeated game paradigm, as in the case of actual electricity markets, the domin...

A structural shift from transaction-based, marginal cost pricing to feebased service business models often accompanies the emergence of “platform” markets, i.e. multi-sided markets where an intermediary captures the value of the interaction between user groups. The many examples include telecommunications, data storage, cinema, music and media, and the automobile industry. Why not electricity? ...

In this paper we discuss second-generation electricity reforms being formulated in Latin America and how they are being reshaped by the California crisis, which had stood as a paradigm, at least in theory, for fully competitive markets. We argue that the main lesson policy makers in Latin America should draw from the experience in California and other electricity markets around the world is tha...

The past several years have seen marked changes in the institutional structures of the electric power industry in many countries. In most cases the driving forces for change have come from the governments. Often the objective is to introduce more competition and to increase private sector ownership of the electric supply industry. The overall aim regardless of the drivers, is to reduce the pric...

The origins of the Mexican Electric Power System can be traced back to the year 1879, when the first thermoelectric plant started its operation, mainly to satisfy the textile industry in the city of Leon, in the state of Guanajuato. At these early stages, the main goal of the electricity supply industry was that of satisfying the demand of the textile and mining industries (like “Real del Monte...

Societies in developed countries depend heavily on the safe and secured operation of critical infrastructures such as energy, telecommunication, transportation, traffic and food and water supply, as well as social and medical care systems. Critical infrastructure (CI) can be severely damaged, destroyed or disrupted by technical failure (accidents), human failure (negligence), natural disasters,...