تجدید ساختار عمده فروشی برق :آیا سال 2004 "نقطه اوج" بود؟

Whatever happens, it is doubtful that we will ever return to the now almost touchingly naïve faith in open access transmission and competitive wholesale power markets that characterized the electric utility industry just a few years ago. Too much ratepayer blood and investor red ink has been spilled and too many expectations have been dashed. It may be time to ask whether we should continue down our current electricity policy path, or seek out a new direction.

Looking back on 2004, it might well be the year the electric industry reached the “tipping point” on wholesale restructuring. In 2004, it became abundantly clear that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's Standard Market Design (SMD) rulemaking,1 even after being repackaged by FERC as the Wholesale Market Platform (with the most unfortunate acronym of WMP),2 was really dead, and no final rule would be forthcoming.3 2004 similarly saw the beginning of FERC's renewed interest in reviewing and enforcing its once-passé Order No. 888 Open Access Transmission Tariff (OATT).4 It was the year that those polar opposite organizations, the American Public Power Association and the Cato Institute, actually appeared to agree that something had gone awry during the electric industry's wholesale restructuring, and that simply continuing down the current regulatory path would not be wise.5 A new consensus appears to be developing—one that says the industry must step over the wreckage of SMD and FERC's failed efforts to form regional transmission organizations (RTOs) in those regions that do not have them (and likely will not soon) and must reexamine the efficacy of the RTOs in those regions that do have them—all with the goal of finally cutting the Gordian knot of regulatory uncertainty that has dogged the industry. How did this change happen, and why? This article will attempt to identify some of the economic, regulatory, and political forces that coalesced in 2004, and suggest how the industry might proceed from here.