Forthcoming Paper: Implications of Smart Grid Innovation for Organizational Models in Electricity Distribution

Back in 2001 I participated in a year-long forum on the future of the electricity distribution model. Convened by the Center for the Advancement of Energy Markets, the DISCO of the Future Forum brought together many stakeholders to develop several scenarios and analyze their implications (and several of those folks remain friends, playmates in the intellectual sandbox, and commenters here at KP [waves at Ed]!). As noted in this 2002 Electric Light and Power article,

Among the 100 recommendations that CAEM discusses in the report, the forum gave suggestions ranging from small issues-that regulators should consider requiring a standard form (or a “consumer label”) on pricing and terms and conditions of service for small customers to be provided to customers at the tie of the initial offer (as well as upon request)-to larger ones, including the suggestions that regulators should establish a standard distribution utility reporting format for all significant distribution upgrades and extensions, and that regulated DISCOs should be permitted to recover their reasonable costs for development of grid interface designs and grid interconnect application review.

“The technology exists to support a competitive retail market responsive to price signals and demand constraints,” the report concludes. “The extent to which the market is opened to competition and the extent to which these technologies are applied by suppliers, DISCOS and customers will, in large part, be determined by state legislatures and regulators.”

Now in 2015, technological dynamism has brought to a head many of the same questions, regulatory models, and business models that we “penciled out” 14 years ago.

In a new paper, forthcoming in the Wiley Handbook of Smart Grid Development, I grapple with that question: what are the implications of this technological dynamism for the organizational form of the distribution company? What transactions in the vertically-integrated supply chain should be unbundled, what assets should it own, and what are the practical policy issues being tackled in various places around the world as they deal with these questions? I analyze these questions using a theoretical framework from the economics of organization and new institutional economics. And I start off with a historical overview of the industry’s technology, regulation, and organizational model.

Implications of Smart Grid Innovation for Organizational Models in Electricity Distribution

Abstract: Digital technologies from outside the electricity industry are prompting changes in both regulatory institutions and electric utility business models, leading to the disaggregation or unbundling of historically vertically integrated electricity firms in some jurisdictions and not others, and simultaneously opening the door for competition with the traditional electric utility business. This chapter uses the technological and organizational history of the industry, combined with the transactions cost theory of the firm and of vertical integration, to explore the implications of smart grid technologies for future distribution company business models. Smart grid technologies reduce transactions costs, changing economical firm boundaries and reducing the traditional drivers of vertical integration. Possible business models for the distribution company include an integrated utility, a network manager, or a coordinating platform provider.