PREMIUM: The Topic – Competition

The 45th president of the US maybe stealing all the headlines, but it’s the words of the 31st which struck a chord with Utility Week as it compiled this Topic feature.

President Herbert Hoover said: “Competition is not only the basis of protection to the consumer, but is the incentive to progress.”

With competitive markets opening and growing in the UK utilities sector, competition is taking hold like never before.

It also remains a topic of ongoing and fierce political debate. In the energy sector, there are over 50 retail suppliers, more than ever before, yet there are still claims that the market is flawed and failing its customers.

The generation market is open to more types and a wider breadth of technologies than ever before, yet large-scale thermal plants, in particular nuclear and gas, seem to be dominating, despite the progress being made in storage and other innovative solutions.

The networks too are facing the ingress of competition, in distribution level connections and services businesses, but also via Ofto (offshore transmission) and Cato (onshore) regimes for the transmission system.

Competition is also about to take hold in the water sector, with non-household competition scheduled to go live in April, and seemingly set to extend into the domestic sector as well.

The wholesale side of the industry is another area where competitive forces are tentatively kicking in, and these are only set to get stronger with a regulator keen on deregulation.

Click here to download and read The Topic.