Industry Terms

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Unbundle
To separate electricity service into its basic components- generation, transmission, distribution and ancillary services; which may then be provided by the same entity or multiple providers.

Unbundled Services
The selling and pricing of energy services separately as opposed to offering services “bundled” into packages with a single price for the whole package. With unbundling, separate fees are charged for each service, based upon only the costs of providing that service (i.e., transportation, storage, generation, production, etc.).

Usage Charge
A component of a utility’s rate structure charged on a per unit of energy basis.

Utility
A regulated entity which exhibits the characteristics of a natural monopoly. For the purposes of electric industry restructuring, “utility” refers to the regulated, vertically integrated electric company. “Transmission utility” refers to the regulated owner/operator of the transmission system only. “Distribution utility” refers to the regulated owner/operator of the distribution system which serves retail customers.

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