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)
“Because humans are not alone in exhibiting such behavior—bees stockpile royal jelly, birds feather their nests, mice shred paper—it’s possible that a pregnant woman who scrubs her house from floor to ceiling [just before her baby is born] is responding to a biological imperative . . . . Of course there are those who believe that . . . the burst of energy that propels a pregnant woman to clean her house is a perfectly natural response to their mother’s impending visit.”
—Mary Arrigo (20th century)
“While I am in favor of the Government promptly enforcing the laws for the present, defending the forts and collecting the revenue, I am not in favor of a war policy with a view to the conquest of any of the slave States; except such as are needed to give us a good boundary. If Maryland attempts to go off, suppress her in order to save the Potomac and the District of Columbia. Cut a piece off of western Virginia and keep Missouri and all the Territories.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“To see him act is like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)