Electrical Power operation in Taiwan is moving toward liberalization due to the influence of the global economic trend. To open up private investment opportunities and enable funds to be more easily obtained the government had proposed to pass new legislation, Electricity Act Amendment, to improve the investment environment and restructure the industry.
According to the draft of the Electricity Act Amendment, the main component of Taiwan deregulated power market will consist of forward bilateral market and real time imbalance market. Taiwan ISO will be the core body of the future power market operations. A three steps phased introduction of Taiwan ISO and liberalization of retail electricity market are adopted. To be successful or not in the deregulation of our electricity supply industry will influence not only the competitiveness of Taiwan’s industries but also the well-being of the general public. However, how to deregulate the electricity supply industry depends on the particular environment of each individual country and on the objectives of the reform.
Among the advanced countries, the UK started to deregulate its state-owned power industry in 1989. Its vertically-integrated power industry was functionally restructured into generation, transmission and distribution sectors and a mandatory power bidding market was established for determining the dispatch of electricity. The UK’s experience has subsequently been simulated and adopted in many other countries. In the early 1990s, the US, Australia, New Zealand and the European Union also started to deregulate their power markets, although they used somewhat different approaches.
As to Asian countries, the deregulation reform started only relatively slowly. Singapore is the first country to deregulate its electricity industry by adopting New Zealand’s approach to deregulation. Japan also started to open up its electricity retail market by abolishing utility franchises on sale to high voltage customers i