Open Access Same-Time Information System - Impact of The Energy Policy Act of 1992

Impact of The Energy Policy Act of 1992

The Energy Policy Act of 1992 (EPAct) laid the initial foundation for the eventual deregulation of the North American electricity market. This Act called for utility companies to allow external entities fair access to the electric transmission systems in North America. The act's intent was to allow large customers (and in theory, every customer) to choose their electricity supplier and subsequently pay for the transmission to deliver it from the generation to serve their load.

Based on the premise that new generating facilities would be allowed fair access to their regional transmission system, and precipitated by the EPAct of 1992, construction of new independently-owned generation assets began in response to the development of the North American electricity market. Recognizing competition was coming, electric utility companies began modifying their scheduling functions by forming affiliated Power Marketing departments. Similarly, financial trading interests and existing energy companies (outside of electricity) saw the opportunities in the emerging electricity market and began to organize unaffiliated power marketing divisions. With open access, anyone with the proper resources and/or creditworthiness could purchase the rights to generation, move it across the transmission network (provided adequate capacity was available), and deliver it to a place of higher demand.

Following passage of the EPAct of 1992, independent generation owner/operators (also called independent power producers or IPPs) and unaffiliated power marketers lodged frequent complaints with FERC about unfair treatment under the new open access requirements. The complaints generally followed the same theme: vertically integrated electric utility companies would favor their own affiliated power marketing division over external parties trying to move power on the system. In many cases, the power marketers operated side by side with the transmission operators (or it might even be the same person) and there were no rules to prevent unfair treatment of external transmission system users.

Read more about this topic:  Open Access Same-Time Information System

Famous quotes containing the words impact of the, impact of, impact, energy, policy and/or act:

    “The question confronting the Church today is not any longer whether the man in the street can grasp a religious message, but how to employ the communications media so as to let him have the full impact of the Gospel message.”
    —Pope John Paul II (b. 1920)

    “Conquest is the missionary of valour, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world.”
    —Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)

    “Too many existing classrooms for young children have this overriding goal: To get the children ready for first grade. This goal is unworthy. It is hurtful. This goal has had the most distorting impact on five-year-olds. It causes kindergartens to be merely the handmaidens of first grade.... Kindergarten teachers cannot look at their own children and plan for their present needs as five-year-olds.”
    —James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)

    “For infants and toddlers learning and living are the same thing. If they feel secure, treasured, loved, their own energy and curiosity will bring them new understanding and new skills.”
    —Amy Laura Dombro (20th century)

    “The policy of dollar diplomacy is one that appeals alike to idealistic humanitarian sentiments, to dictates of sound policy, and strategy, and to legitimate commercial aims.”
    —William Howard Taft (1857–1930)

    “For I choose that my remembrances of him should be pleasing, affecting, religious. I will love him as a glorified friend, after the free way of friendship, and not pay him a stiff sign of respect, as men do to those whom they fear. A passage read from his discourses, a moving provocation to works like his, any act or meeting which tends to awaken a pure thought, a flow of love, an original design of virtue, I call a worthy, a true commemoration.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)