Deregulation

Featured Topic: By the Year 2003...

In the fast-approaching era of deregulation, the electric utility industry will no longer be a vertically integrated industry as it is today. Agreement among industry analysts is almost universal that the most likely scenario to develop depicts three distinct business types: a generation business, a transmission business, and a distribution business. The players left within the industry will participate in one or more of these three business types.

Every utility that exists in today’s regulated, monopolistic environment has a choice to make. The choice is about the market in which it wants to be a player, as well as which marketing strategy it wants to implement to be successful in its chosen market. And the need to make that choice is immediate. If anything, change is coming at us much faster than anyone believed it would even as recently as 18 months ago. The pieces to this puzzle will be firmly in place well before the year 2003.