During the Summer of 2000, wholesale electricity prices in California were nearly 500% higher than they were during the same months in 1998 or 1999. This price explosion was unexpected and has called into question whether electricity restructuring will bring the benefits of competition promised...

There is a public perception that electricity liberalisation is the major cause of recent electricity blackouts. This is reflected in the newspaper reporting of blackouts. By contrast, it was not listed as a cause in any official investigation reports. In this paper, we examine the common causes...

In recent years, a number of empirical studies and energy regulators have applied benchmarking techniques to measure the efficiency and performance of network utilities. An important issue has been the extent to which such results are influenced by contextual factors. Among these, weather...

Efficiency analysis of electricity distribution networks is often limited to technical or cost efficiency measures. However, some important non-tradable aspects of their service such as quality of service and network energy losses are generally not part of the analysis. A regulatory concern is...