silhouette of two engineers standing at electricity station, discussing plan

Report | 2018
Reimagining the Utility
By Dan Cross-Call, Rachel Gold, Leia Guccione, Mike Henchen, Virginia Lacy
Electric utilities must modernize to serve new economic and policy objectives, including managing an increasingly distributed and decarbonized power system. A fundamental question for this future system is: What is the appropriate scope for utility functions (and associated earnings opportunities) versus those that should be provided by a competitive marketplace?

The scope of utility functions can be either expansive or limited. Meanwhile, the total size of economic activity in the electricity sector may be larger in the future, providing growth opportunities even where proportional market share is less.
Countless individual decisions and compromises will ultimately determine the course of the utility. At every turn, utility program designers and regulators can evaluate proposals against key variables.
