Metering and energy management in the environment of a de-regulated electricity market

In Finland, a de-regulated electricity market was opened on the first of November 1995. For electric power companies this caused big changes. Customers now have the right to choose their power suppliers. The power network operation and energy sales which have formerly been jointly organised by one company, are now separate businesses and the power network operator has to transmit the electric power on equal terms regardless from whom the customers purchase their power. In this paper, the problems of energy management from the standpoint of the energy selling and distributing companies in the new situation are discussed. The topics covered are: the estimation of hourly energy demands; optimisation of energy purchases; short-term trade management; and retail tariff design.