ECON 132 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Market Power, Energy Star, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
Document Summary
Characteristics of the four main components of electricity power provision: generation, transmission grid, local distribution, retail sales/servicing account and their relationship to the properties of a natural monopoly. Issues related to rate of return regulation of investor owned utilities by public utility commissions (puc) including puc objectives. Tradeoffs in nature of plants used to generate electricity. Sources of inefficiency under rate of return regulation. Problems including how power generating capacity was divested from ious (market power remained), almost all sales through short term pooling/auction market rather than bilateral contracts, price cap on retail sales. Initial objectives of investor owned utilities and consumer groups. Understand how the capital costs and variable costs differ between renewable sources and non renewable sources. Which renewable technologies have exhibited the most rapid growth and what factors have spurred this growth (e. g. , subsidies, renewable energy portfolio requirements, technological change).
