Abstract
Since the nineties, the electricity supply industry
of many countries has been moving from a vertical integrated
natural monopoly status quo to an as-much-as-possible free
market. That movement would be reflected in the retail
electricity price. In the traditional cost of service structure of the
electric power sector the costs were simply allocated to
generation, transmission and distribution. After the
liberalization, some activities were split up and new institutions
were created. The electricity systems of the UK and California
have been operating in very different environments including
political framework, energy resources, and economic structure.
To evaluate the overall results, in this paper we analyze the
evolution of the real average final price, in PPP units, of
electricity in the UK and California over the last three decades.
