A practical alternative to group profiles

The competitive electricity market in the UK relies on half hourly pricing for the trading of energy at the Grid Supply point. For accurate contract settlement this would require all 22 million customers to have meters which could measure and record their half hourly consumption-this is not realistic by 1998. To overcome this limitation the Pool Executive-supported by the Regulator-has proposed the widespread use of “Group Profiles”, as part of their “Preferred Trading Arrangement” (PTA). Examples of the Pool´s assertions are: a metering solution is likely to be costly, inconvenient, and impractical for smaller and domestic customers; and the greater use of load profiling would seem to minimise costs and inconvenience and be conducive to effective competition. The PTA has been criticised adversely on the complexity of the proposals. It is against the political (complete the privatisation process by 1998) and economic (competition) dogma that the final irony could well be that neither are achieved by the use of arbitrary group profiling systems. This paper analyses the defects of the chosen system and proposes a simpler cheaper and more equitable system