Multiple perspectives in power transmission expansion planning under environmental awareness. http://dx.doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)0733-9402(2009)135:3(53)

Abstract

Over the past 20 years, most countries have made revolutionary changes in critical infrastructure. One of them is the massive deregulation of infrastructure industries such as the airline, natural gas, trucking, telecommunications, and most recently, the electric
power sectors. Traditionally, these infrastructure industries were publicly owned and/or run by vertically integrated, regulated monopolies. Deregulation of these infrastructure industries has brought about decentralization of decision making and has created markets that enable and incentivize customer choices. By
empowering consumers to make informed choices, the deregulation movement has fundamentally changed the concepts of pricing and reliability. For example, in an infrastructure industry that is governed by an “obligation to serve,” service curtailment (e.g., being bumped off a flight due to overbooking) is considered a failure in terms of reliability. By contrast, a deregulated environment is governed by “obligation to serve at a price,” in which service curtailment is no longer counted as a failure but a voluntary action of the customer (in exchange for compensation or a cheaper fare).