What is EPSA

Full Competition: EPSA's Focus

Competition will continue to be one of the dominant issues facing the electric power industry. EPSA members support policies that give all suppliers an equal opportunity to compete and give all customers an equal opportunity to reap the benefits of competition.

EPSA represents companies that understand what it means to compete. Since its inception in the early 1980s, the independent power industry--now more aptly termed the competitive power supply industry to include both generation and marketing--has faced intensely competitive conditions. Projects developed by independent power producers continue to face stiff competition from other competitors within the industry. They also must continue to better the self-build options available to the traditional utilities to whom they currently sell their power. Power marketers compete with each other and with utilities and other wholesale power suppliers. With the development of new merchant power plants, the purchase of existing utility plants, and the transfer of previously rate-regulated plants to competitive corporate affiliates, EPSA reports that competitive power suppliers own and operate approximately 36 percent of the nation’s installed generating capacity as of the end of 2001.

The next step in the evolution of the industry, retail competition, will permit any buyer to purchase electricity from any seller. Such full scale competition will allow groups of buyers to purchase from a single seller or from several suppliers. All of this market activity will lead toward even lower prices, technological efficiency, environmental improvements, enhanced reliability, and increased innovation in pricing and services.

EPSA believes that comprehensive federal legislation is needed to bring these and other benefits of a fully competitive market to all customers. Electricity is a product of interstate commerce. Therefore, federal legislation is needed to further the development of robust regional competitive markets.

Federal legislation also is needed to dispose of outdated laws and to reconcile the roles of federal power marketing administrations and other public power entities in a competitive market place. Anything less can not and will not work as well. A state-by-state "crazy quilt" of inconsistent policies and procedures will send mixed messages to consumers, resulting in less efficient competition.

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