The $200 billion question
The desirability of retail wheeling of electric power is discussed. Perhaps the only fact everyone accepts is that if retail wheeling were implemented immediately without provisions for recovering the enormous costs such a change would create, the financial consequences for the investor-owned electric utility industry could be catastrophic. Aside from issues of fairness and reliability - and those are huge make-or-break issues - estimates of what`s at stake financially range as high as $150 to $200 billion. That makes the US electric utility industry`s potential exposure to stranded assets about 10 times greater than the total transition costs involved in the recent restructuring of the natural gas industry. Given the enormity of this potential, regardless of the desirability or inevitability of retail wheeling, now is the time to develop plans that could deal with transition costs clearly, fairly, equitably, and consistently.
- OSTI ID:
- 121433
- Journal Information:
- Electric Perspectives, Vol. 18, Issue 5; Other Information: PBD: Sep-Oct 1994
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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