Changing measurement and standards needs in a deregulated electric utility industry

This paper presents a first attempt to quantify the potential national benefits of enhanced measurement and standards in the US electric utility industry. These benefits are essentially the costs associated with lost opportunities of deregulation at the system operations and market operations levels without these measurements and standards. They essentially represent benefits associated with enhanced system operation and market expansion. We surveyed several industry experts from different types of organizations to help identify the areas of economic benefits and then to help quantify these benefits, and we used several secondary data sources to develop range estimates of these benefits for review by these experts. The estimates of benefits range from a low of $3.1 billion to a high of $6.5 billion at the national level. Although these estimates are not highly precise, the pattern of results within the system and market operations categories are plausible and provide early guidance to measurement and standards development initiatives and investments. No attempt is made in this study to examine the benefits associated with any particular initiatives or to suggest which organization should pursue them.