Should we blame ourselves?

Should we blame ourselves?

Power curtailments, brown outs, black outs .... you name it!

Why?

The answer is plain and simple: because there is no enough capacity available to meet the market's demand.

But I insist....Why?

In my opinion, because an important national load in each country derives from the residential sector.

And so what?

This segment does NOT contract kW capacity before their local electric utility companies.Accordingly the whole power supply chain does not have a contractual obligation to meet this actual load in severe circumstances. And this because they are NOT obliged by regulations to have capital expenditure allocated in their business plans to face this "peak" load.

Industrial, commercial and institutional energy users, on the other hand, MUST contract kW demand. And they are billed for it. Consequently there is a systemic balance.

Residential energy users pay only a variable cost (kWh). They do NOT contract and therefore do not  pay for kW capacity.

It is high time to evolve the contracting format for residential energy users if we are not not to blame on the failure to invest accordingly.