{"id":77884,"date":"2025-07-15T19:30:59","date_gmt":"2025-07-15T23:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ieee-pels.org\/?post_type=magazine&#038;p=77884"},"modified":"2025-07-15T19:30:59","modified_gmt":"2025-07-15T23:30:59","slug":"how-energy-trading-supports-energy-access-empower-a-billion-lives","status":"publish","type":"magazine","link":"https:\/\/www.ieee-pels.org\/magazine\/how-energy-trading-supports-energy-access-empower-a-billion-lives\/","title":{"rendered":"How Energy Trading Supports Energy Access (Empower a Billion Lives)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In today\u2019s world, it is widely understood that capitalism with open competition is the best way of providing high quality goods and improved services that people want in an economy. The core of capitalism is trade\u2014exchange of something of value for something else of value, with one of them usually being money, a convenient store of value. The \u201cinvisible hands\u201d (to paraphrase Adam Smith) will guide us to a price that balances supply and demand and will drive the price down near to the cost of production due to competition.<\/p>\n<p>Electricity has traditionally been traded from a single producer to a large number of consumers, known to economists as a monopoly. This was not necessarily a nefarious situation; in many cases it was a natural monopoly due to the high cost of connecting every household and other barriers to entry. Other examples of a natural monopoly might be public transportation and (wired) telephone services. In situations with natural monopolies, government regulation often comes in to prevent excessively high prices or corrupt behavior. Today\u2019s utilities are heavily regulated\u2014a discussion of how these distorted incentives hold back the global energy transition underway is a whole other topic.<\/p>\n<p>For more information click <a href=\"https:\/\/ieeexplore.ieee.org\/document\/11062405\">here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In today\u2019s world, it is widely understood that capitalism with open competition is the best way of providing high quality goods and improved services that people want in an economy. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[249,277,987,288,325,766],"magazine-categories":[156,28],"class_list":["post-77884","magazine","type-magazine","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-electric-power","tag-energy-access","tag-energy-trading","tag-energy-transition","tag-microgrid","tag-solar-panels","magazine-categories-community","magazine-categories-departments-and-columns"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>How Energy Trading Supports Energy Access (Empower a Billion Lives) - IEEE Power Electronics Society<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ieee-pels.org\/magazine\/how-energy-trading-supports-energy-access-empower-a-billion-lives\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Energy Trading Supports Energy Access (Empower a Billion Lives) - IEEE Power Electronics Society\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In today\u2019s world, it is widely understood that capitalism with open competition is the best way of providing high quality goods and improved services that people want in an economy. 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