Power Transaction Management in Competitive Electricity Market

With the advancement of technology as well as population throughout the world, the demand of electricity has increased in last few decades. Globally, the per-capita consumption of electricity, a parameter to gauge the development and economic growth of a country, has increased sharply. The growth in electrical energy consumption has kept the required demand unfulfilled. Although a large amount of electrical energy has been added yearly to the installed capacity, the gap in demand and supply is increasing every year. The growth in demand of electrical energy has been so phenomenal that it exceeds the supply by a handsome margin. The growth and development of generation, transmission and distribution sectors have not kept pace with the demand of electricity. Even the development amongst generation, transmission and distribution has been skewed. Pre-deregulation, all power utilities were owned and managed by government with monopoly in operation. This deteriorated the condition of utility due to various reasons such as mounting losses, corruption, system lethargy, unavailability of financial resources, no thrust for modernization and expansion etc. Also, the utility was unable to meet the increasing demand. The monopoly in its operation also leads to poor service to customers and under utilization of available resources. All these had compelled the government to give a rethink on the existing policies and resulted in the process of deregulating the electricity sector which would introduce the private players in it. This was expected to improve operational efficiency and service quality. As a result, power utilities were unbundled into different independent business entities which are Generation Company (GENCO), Transmission Company (TRANSCO) and Distribution Company (DISCO).