A Unifying Framework for Representing Structural and Operational Aspects of Electricity Sector Deregulation

Recent years have witnessed a worldwide wave of deregulatory reforms in many areas of economic activity. In the electricity sector in particular, a multitude of completed as well as ongoing efforts for deregulation demonstrate the need for the development of a framework that allows a systematic reasoning on the valid alternatives for reform. In this paper we propose a view of the electricity supply industry that combines structural characteristics of the sector with operational ones so as to offer a unified view of deregulation alternatives. This framework allows the description of existing models of reform in a generic and abstract way, offering the ability to examine possible combinations of deregulatory features in a structured and repeatable manner.