Going viral: The impacts of covid19 on retail electricity

The response of governments to the covid19 health crisis has highlighted the key points of our earlier article. The covid19 crisis has made it clear that: secure electricity is vital to the modern World; and, the loss of business and commercial load during the crisis dramatizes the need to unbundle remuneration from load. The electricity sector is undergoing an epochal transformation from the Bulk Grid (BG) to the Distributed Generation and Storage (DGS) model in which the role of distributors will change. We suggest pilot projects that will help regulators to understand the needs of systems that emphasize the tiered values of reliable consumer services and new ways of paying for them.