deregulate

On the deregulated, idiosyncratic Texas power market, REPs generally purchase wholesale electricity from power generators and sell it to customers.

This is the gamble at the heart of a deregulated electricity market, in which companies compete to produce and sell electricity, as opposed to a monopoly system with rates fixed by regulators.

Many energy experts say the very nature of the state’s deregulated electric market is perhaps most to blame for last week’s power crisis.

In 1999, Texas joined more than a dozen other states in “deregulating” its electricity system, meaning that it switched from a monopoly power provider to a marketplace of competing power plants and retail utilities.