Recent legislation is quickly moving utilities from a regulated market towards an unregulated market. To effectively compete in this new scenario, a utility must be able to meet customer reliability needs at the lowest possible cost. This can best be done by offering each customer a menu of reliability options. In this manner, a utility can be assured that each customer is receiving appropriate levels of reliability. This paper examines the reliability needs of customers and shows that these needs are best provided through distributions to show how a utility might prevent an unsatisfied industrial customer from switching utilities by offering 10 different reliability improvement options-each with its own associated rate schedule.
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