All but one of U.S. power markets administered by Regional Transmission Operators require that sellers of power to end-users must own or have contractual access to generation capacity sufficient to cover their loads. The exception is the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which...

Debates on restructuring of the U.S. electricity industry are often about the degree to which market relationships should replace transactions that formerly took place within regulated, vertically integrated utilities. Markets for the purchase of energy by vertically unintegrated distribution...