Welcome to the New Era of Resource Planning: Why Restructuring May Lead to More Complex Regulation, Not Less

To prepare themselves, utilities will need to develop much more rigorous analytical tools. The standard analytical toolbox, relying on deterministic production–cost models, cannot be used to evaluate many of the new supply alternatives. Second, to the extent utilities begin to rely on these supply alternatives, they will need to justify their supply decisions to regulators, even if utilities decide to let third parties completely manage their supply portfolios.