Future Trends
As deregulation continues further, utilities are driven to sell their assets as the energy market follows in line with the gas market in use of the futures and spot markets and other financial arrangements. Even globalization with foreign purchases are taking place. Recently, U.K’s National Grid, the largest private electric utility in the world, bought New England’s electric system for $3.2 billion. See the SEC filing dated March 15, 2000 Here Also, Scottish Power purchased Pacific Energy for $12.8 billion. Domestically, local electric and gas firms begin to merge operations as they see advantage of joint affiliation especially with the reduced cost of joint-metering. Technological advances will take place in the competitive wholesale electric markets such examples already being utilized include fuel cells used in space flight, aeroderivative gas turbines used in jet aircrafts, solar engineering and photovoltaic systems, off-shore wind farms, and the communication advances spawned by the digital world particularly with microprocessing which aids in monitoring and dispatching.
Electricity is expected to see growing demand in the future. The Information Revolution is highly reliant on electric power. Other growth areas include emerging new electricity-exclusive technologies, developments in space conditioning, industrial process, and transportation (for example hybrid vehicles, locomotives).
Read more about this topic: Electrical Grid
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