System planning tools for the competitive market

A restructuring of the electric power business in the United States is under way. The form of the restructuring will shift the industry focus from local, vertically integrated monopolies to regional, competitive, and unbundled corporate structures. The premise for change is that market imperfections occur under the regulated monopolistic structure, leading to inefficient use of the interconnected transmission and generation systems. The new order, generically called POOLCO, will not require any fundamentally new analytical system planning methods. It will, however, require the merging of existing generation and transmission (G&T) software into a new G&T system planning function. POOLCO will also require development of new accounting software and communications media.