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Aggregator or Buying Group: Any marketer, broker, public agency, city, county or special district that combines the loads of multiple consumers in facilitating the sale and purchase of electric energy, transmission, and other services on behalf of these consumers.
Capacity: The amount of power available from a generation facility at any time to meet the electric demands of consumers, usually measured in kW (kilowatts) or kVA (kilovolt-amperes).
Basic Service: Electric energy service available from the local electric utility to distribution service customers who for any reason do not receive power from their chosen electric energy supplier or to new business customers before they choose.
Demand: The amount of power required by a consumer at any given time to meet the consumer’s electricity needs, usually measured in kW (kilowatts) or kVA kilowatt-amperes. (Note: Ten 100 watt light bulbs operating simultaneously constitute a demand for 1kW of electric power.) Commercial and industrial customers are often charged for a portion of their electric service in dollars per kW or dollars per kVA.
Distribution Service: The delivery of electric energy to consumers’ homes and businesses.
Electric Energy Brokers: Companies that act as middlemen in a marketplace in which electric power is priced, purchased, and traded. Brokers do not generate, purchase or sell electric energy but facilitate the transactions between electric energy buyers and sellers.
Energy Conservation: Reducing the amount of energy used. The term may also be referred to as energy efficiency.
Energy Suppliers: Companies that sell energy to consumers in a competitive market.
FERC: The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is the agency responsible for regulating the price, terms, and conditions of transactions in the U.S. wholesale electricity market, and any other interstate electricity issues. Intrastate electricity issues and retail electric transactions are regulated primarily by state public utility commissions.
Generation: The manufacture of electric energy at power plants which convert nuclear, fossil, hydro or other energy forms to electricity.
Grid: Industry jargon referring to the interconnected power lines that constitute the transmission/distribution networks of a region. In New England, the transmission grid is controlled and operated by ISO New England.
IOU: Investor-owned utilities are shareholder-owned, publicly traded corporations that are taxed like other private businesses but regulated strictly by both state and federal agencies. Historically, IOUs were granted monopolies via express government actions that simultaneously protected their service territory from competition while guaranteeing a reasonable opportunity to earn a profit commensurate with market and financial risks, and obligated them to provide service to all consumers on demand and at the lowest reasonable cost.
ISO: An independent system operator established to operate a transmission grid independent from all the owners of the transmission facilities to ensure open access by all parties to the grid on comparable terms.
kWh: Acronym for kilowatt hour, the most common unit of measure for electric energy consumption. (Note: operating ten 100 watt light bulbs for one hour consumes 1kWh of electric energy.) Consumers are charged for electric service in cents per kilowatt hour or ¢ per kWh.
Load: The aggregate amount of power demanded of the grid by electricity consumers at any given time which must be satisfied by the total operating capacity of generation companies.
Power Marketer: A company that buys and resells electric energy but does not own its own generating facilities.
Stranded Costs: The financial obligations incurred by an IOU in providing electric service to its customers that may become uneconomical as a result of restructuring and providing consumers with choice of electric energy service suppliers (e.g., investments in generation facilities or pre-established, long-term, contractual obligations for power supplies). Stranded costs are recovered through the transition charge.
Energy Service Charge (NH) or Standard Offer Service (MA):Electric energy service provided by the consumer’s local electric utility to those customers who do not wish to choose a competitive supplier.
Transmission Service: Movement of power and/or electric energy from its source to consumer areas on high voltage lines.
Unbundling: The process of separating electricity into
components, and the separate pricing of each individual part. Traditionally, the services, such as generation, transmission and
distribution, had been tied together and offered to customers as a single, bundled product.