A public utility company is an organization that maintains the infrastructure for a public service. Public utilities are subject to forms of public control and regulation ranging from local community-based groups to statewide government monopolies.
Net metering is an electricity billing mechanism that allows consumers who generate some or all of their own electricity to use that electricity anytime, instead of when it is generated. This is particularly important with renewable energy sources like wind and solar, which are non-dispatchable. Monthly net metering allows consumers to use solar power generated during the day at night, or wind from a windy day later in the month. Annual net metering rolls over a net kilowatt-hour (kWh) credit to the following month, allowing solar power that was generated in July to be used in December, or wind power from March in August.
The Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act is a United States Act passed as part of the National Energy Act. It was meant to promote energy conservation and promote greater use of domestic energy and renewable energy. The law was created in response to the 1973 energy crisis, and one year in advance of a second energy crisis.
A regional transmission organization (RTO) in the United States is an electric power transmission system operator (TSO) that coordinates, controls, and monitors a multi-state electric grid. The transfer of electricity between states is considered interstate commerce, and electric grids spanning multiple states are therefore regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The voluntary creation of RTOs was initiated by FERC in December 1999. The purpose of the RTO is to promote economic efficiency, reliability, and non-discriminatory practices while reducing government oversight.
The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (MPUC) is an independent regulatory agency within the U.S. state of Minnesota responsible for the oversight and regulation of public utilities, including electric, natural gas, and telecommunications services. Created by the Minnesota Legislature, the commission's primary mission is to ensure that residents of Minnesota have access to safe, adequate, and efficient utility services at fair, reasonable rates. It plays a significant role in balancing the needs of consumers, the environment, and utility companies.
Demand response is a change in the power consumption of an electric utility customer to better match the demand for power with the supply. Until the 21st century decrease in the cost of pumped storage and batteries, electric energy could not be easily stored, so utilities have traditionally matched demand and supply by throttling the production rate of their power plants, taking generating units on or off line, or importing power from other utilities. There are limits to what can be achieved on the supply side, because some generating units can take a long time to come up to full power, some units may be very expensive to operate, and demand can at times be greater than the capacity of all the available power plants put together. Demand response, a type of energy demand management, seeks to adjust in real-time the demand for power instead of adjusting the supply.
The California Public Utilities Commission is a regulatory agency that regulates privately owned public utilities in the state of California, including electric power, telecommunications, natural gas and water companies. In addition, the CPUC regulates common carriers, including household goods movers, limousines, rideshare services, self-driving cars, and rail crossing safety. The CPUC has headquarters in the Civic Center district of San Francisco, and field offices in Los Angeles and Sacramento.
The Texas electricity market is deregulated, meaning that there is competition in the generation and distribution of electricity. Power generators in the Texas Interconnection, managed by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, participate in an energy-only electricity market and are compensated only for the electricity they produce. The wholesale generation market was deregulated in 1995 and the distribution market in 1999, with Texas Senate Bill 7. This replaced the prior system in which power was generated and consumed locally by the same utility with one in which retail providers contracted with generators across the state.
Financial incentives for photovoltaics are incentives offered to electricity consumers to install and operate solar-electric generating systems, also known as photovoltaics (PV).
A feed-in tariff is a policy mechanism designed to accelerate investment in renewable energy technologies by offering long-term contracts to renewable energy producers. This means promising renewable energy producers an above-market price and providing price certainty and long-term contracts that help finance renewable energy investments. Typically, FITs award different prices to different sources of renewable energy in order to encourage the development of one technology over another. For example, technologies such as wind power and solar PV are awarded a higher price per kWh than tidal power. FITs often include a "digression": a gradual decrease of the price or tariff in order to follow and encourage technological cost reductions.
Electricity pricing can vary widely by country or by locality within a country. Electricity prices are dependent on many factors, such as the price of power generation, government taxes or subsidies, CO
2 taxes, local weather patterns, transmission and distribution infrastructure, and multi-tiered industry regulation. The pricing or tariffs can also differ depending on the customer-base, typically by residential, commercial, and industrial connections.
California Proposition 7, would have required California utilities to procure half of their power from renewable resources by 2025. In order to make that goal, levels of production of solar, wind and other renewable energy resources would more than quadruple from their current output of 10.9%. It would also require California utilities to increase their purchase of electricity generated from renewable resources by 2% annually to meet Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) requirements of 40% in 2020 and 50% in 2025. Current law AB32 requires an RPS of 20% by 2010.
The Energy Commission, abbreviated ST, is a regulatory body for the energy industry in Peninsular Malaysia and Sabah. The commission was established under the Energy Commission Act 2001. Its key role to ensure that the energy industry is developed in an efficient manner so that Malaysia is ready to meet the new challenges of globalisation and liberalisation, particularly in the energy supply industry.
The United States has the second largest electricity sector in the world, with 4,178 Terawatt-hours of generation in 2023. In 2023 the industry earned $491b in revenue at an average price of $0.127/kWh.
An electric utility, or a power company, is a company in the electric power industry that engages in electricity generation and distribution of electricity for sale generally in a regulated market. The electrical utility industry is a major provider of energy in most countries.
Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission(NERC) is an independent regulatory body with authority for the regulation of the electric power industry in Nigeria. NERC was formed in 2005 under the Obasanjo administration’s economic reform agenda through the Electric Power Sector Reform Act, 2005 for formation and review of electricity tariffs, transparent policies regarding subsidies, promotion of policies that are efficient and environmentally friendly, and also including forming and enforcing of standards in the creation and use of electricity in Nigeria. NERC was instituted primarily to regulate the tariff of Power Generating companies owned or controlled by the government, and any other generating company which has a licence for power generation and transmission of energy, and distribution of electricity.
The electricity sector in the Philippines provides electricity through power generation, transmission, and distribution to many parts of the country. The Philippines is divided into three electrical grids, one each for Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao. As of June 2016, the total installed capacity in the Philippines was 20,055 megawatts (MW), of which 14,348 MW was on the Luzon grid. As of June, 2016, the all-time peak demand on Luzon was 9,726 MW at 2:00 P.M. on May 2, 2016; on Visayas was 1,878 MW at 2:00 P.M. on May 11, 2016; and on Mindanao was 1,593 MW at 1:35 P.M. on June 8, 2016. However, about 12% of Filipinos have no access to electricity. The Philippines is also one of the countries in the world that has a fully functioning electricity market since 2006 called the Philippine Wholesale Electricity Spot Market(WESM) and is operated by an independent market operator.
The Commission for Regulation of Utilities, formerly known as the Commission for Energy Regulation, is the Republic of Ireland's energy and water economic utility regulator.
The Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka is the government entity responsible for policy formulation and regulation of the electric power distribution, water supply, petroleum resources, and other public utilities in Sri Lanka.
