It Is Time to Change How We Think about Electricity: Getting the Consumer Involved

The electricity supply industry operated for over a hundred years under a regulatory framework that viewed our economic welfare as directly linked to our increasing consumption of electricity. The public utility under its obligation to serve customers designed a system to meet the growing consumption needs of the public. Today both our attitude toward energy and our technological capabilities allow the consumer to play their proper role as informed customers. The consumer can now deploy conservation technologies, and state regulators have begun to modify the form of regulation employed policies that enable conservation and energy efficiency choices on the consumers' part. This article examines the history of this transformation in the consumers' role within the electric system and the implications this has for the evolution in regulatory policy that is now harnessing the power of consumer involvement and breaking the link between profits and sales.