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Electric Choices: Deregulation and the Future of Electric Power.

Article Excerpt
Electric Choices: Deregulation and the Future of Electric Power, edited by ANDREW N. KLEIT (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2006) 242 pages, ISBN-10: 0-7425-4875-9, ISBN-13: 978-0-7425-4875-6 hardback, ISBN-10: 0-7425-4876-7; ISBN-13: 978-0-7425-4876-3 paperback)

By most accounts, electricity restructuring has turned out to be quite a bit different from most predictions. While the most libertarian free-market advocates urged that things proceed along the lines of trucking, banking, natural gas, or airlines, regulators preferred to follow the advice of those who believed in a telecommunications model of limited liberalization. The results have been no slam dunk for either position. While California's restructuring was a calamity, PJM and New York are solid examples of success. Installed-capacity markets have not devolved as some thought but instead have evolved to be more complicated and sophisticated. Retail access has not taken off in many states along with the associated innovation in energy services that many had predicted. However, all in all, restructuring has not been the unmitigated disaster the naysayers anticipated.

The California catastrophe is only one of many rationales for revisiting electricity restructuring. Marginal costs are now above average costs in parts...

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