Market Liberalization: Changes in the Selection Environment of the Electricity Sector and its Consequences on Product Innovation

The provision with high quality electricity anytime and anywhere in a nation’s territory has become one of the fundamental preconditions for the proper working of industrial societies. Since a couple of years, the economic framework under which the sector operates is subjected to fundamental transformations. Electric utilities that were used to operate under monopoly conditions for decades have to adapt to a competitive environment today. Market liberalization has been undertaken concomitantly with market reforms in other sectors, such as telecommunications, public transport, and so on in order to increase efficiency and enhance service quality. For the electricity sector, the history of the virtues and defects of liberalized markets for long-term prosperity of modern societies has not yet been written.