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In 1996, Alberta began to restructure its electricity market away from traditional regulation to a market-based system. The market now includes a host of buyers and sellers, and an increasingly diverse infrastructure. Consumers range from residential buyers to huge industrial consumers mining the oil sands, operating pipelines and milling forest products. On the supply side, generators range from wind farms east of Crowsnest Pass to huge coal-fired plants near Edmonton. The diversity of Alberta's electricity supply has increased substantially. To a large extent because of deregulation, the province has more technology, fuels, locations, ownership, and maintenance diversity than in the past. The system's reliability, its cost structure and Alberta's collective exposure to risk are now met by a complex system based on diverse power sources, mainly coal and natural gas, with some wind and hydroelectric energy sources. == History == The Alberta Government passed the Electric Utilities Act(1996) effective January 1, 1996 which created Power Pool of Alberta, a wholesale market clearing entity. The Power Pool was a not for profit entity that operated the "competitive wholesale market including dispatch of generation." The Electric Utilities Act stipulated all electric energy bought and sold in Alberta had to be exchanged through the Power Pool which "served as an independent, central, open access pool." It functioned as a "spot market intending to match the demand with the lowest cost supply and establish an hourly pool price." Alberta was the first Canadian province to implement a deregulated electricity market. Competitive wholesale markets were being fostered in the 1990s as part of the liberalization process of the 1990s changing some parameters such as the unbundling of generation, transmission and distribution functions of incumbent utilities. Local distribution utilities, either investor- or municipally owned, retained the obligation to supply and the 6 largest utilities were assigned a share of the output of existing generators at a fixed price. The province moved to full retail access in 2001. In 2003 The Alberta Electric System Operator was established under the provisions of the Electric Utilities Act, and through the AESO, a spot market was created. After consumers complained about high prices in 2000, the government implemented a Regulated Rate Option (RRO), as a means to shield consumers from price volatility. The generation sector in Alberta is dominated by TransAlta (formerly Calgary Power), ENMAX, and Capital Power Corporation, a spin-off of Edmonton's municipally owned company EPCOR. Utility companies in Alberta also include the wind generating Bullfrog Power, TransAlta Corporation, Alberta Power limited, AltaLink, ATCO Power and FortisAlberta. Although 5,700 megawatts of new generation was added and 1,470 of old plants were retired between 1998 and 2009, coal still accounted for 73.8% of utility-generated power in 2007, followed by natural gas, with 20.6%. Installed capacity reached 12,834 megawatts in 2009, with coal (5,692 MW) and natural gas (5,189 MW) representing the bulk of the province's generation fleet. As of 2008, Alberta's electricity sector was the most carbon-intensive of all Canadian provinces and territories, with total emissions of 55.9 million tonnes of in 2008, accounting for 47% of all Canadian emissions in the electricity and heat generation sector. By 2010 wind capacity had reached 657 MW and hydroelectric capacity produced 900 MW.〔 In June 2010 the federal government announced tougher new emission measures. Alberta will likely remain dependent on coal generated electricity into 2050.〔 〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Alberta electricity policy」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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