PowerPoint Presentation:
At the end of the nineteenth century, electricity supply companies were formed. Once they were put in place, power was available for the first time to the public whereas before it was primarily used just to run street cars and power lighting on city streets. In these early days, even businesses only relied on electricity supply companies for lighting needs. It wasn’t until the industrial age when machinery and equipment became used on a large scale that these entities provided power for more than lighting. Now they had other needs such as power for different kinds of motors and heating devices. Modern Power Company still does business much in the same way they did when they first began. They still rely on a metering device to keep track of the consumption, and this is how they know how much usage to bill the consumer for at the end of a billing cycle. Of course, over time metering has improved and instead of needing to be manually read, it is possible to now get the read outs from simply pulling it up on a computer. The residential consumer has a rate that they are billed at per kilowatt of power used. Business, commercial and industrial consumers often have a much more complex type of billing process which is based on bandwidth and size of the company. The meters used in these types of settings are very different from the ones that that may be found outside of a residence. In other countries, electricity supply companies may be limited to a monopoly type of situation, but in the United States that was not the case. There have always been regulatory bodies in place to make sure that there are no anti-competition situations taking place. After many states participated in deregulation of energy, competition was imminent. In the beginning, power generation was quite simple and only involved sending out a bill to the consumer and hooking up or disconnecting service as needed. This was done by the power supplier that was assigned to the area. Today electricity supply companies in many states enter into a market that is packed full with competitors, so they must do their best to generate power as efficiently and as safely as possible. This allows them to keeps the costs low so that they can remain competitive. They know that the consumer can easily switch providers in a deregulated market, so this is their motivation to continue to provide their customers with low rates and great service. Power providers have come a long way since the beginning of the market. They have had to find new ways to stay afloat in these tough economic times, as well as finding better fuel sources along the way for the sake of saving the environment and keeping prices as low as possible. This in essence means that the consumer will end up the winner because of this extremely volatile and competitive market. Saving money is as easy as doing a little bit of wise comparison shopping for most consumers