Electricity Markets Around the World
Elliot Roseman is program director for the Electricity Market Initiative for the U.S. Energy Association.
Electricity markets around the world have been working to integrate fragmented systems for several decades, and it is still a work in progress. The regional transmission organizations in the U.S., Western and Central Europe, West Africa and more have achieved substantial benefits while dealing with the challenges of rapidly advancing technologies, growing distributed resources, emissions reductions, and regulatory changes.
Figure 1 shows that the eleven power systems of Southeast Europe (SEE) are now well positioned to take on this type of regional integration, as these countries are on the cusp of establishing a tailored, competitive market, one that will give customers real price transparency and stability.
The results of a recent pathbreaking study show how effective this power market integration could be.
Through the Electricity Market Initiative for Southeast Europe (EMI), formed in April 2018, the electricity systems in SEE are working in partnership with the United States Energy Association (USEA) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to achieve eight powerful benefits from integrating their power market.