Category Archives: Telecom

Clear Definitions for Energizing Discussions

In the debate surrounding the upcoming Hydro-Québec bill, many opinions are circulating. Unfortunately, several concepts are mixed up, which confuses the discussion. Here are some definitions to enlighten readers.

  • Monopoly: The transmission and the distribution of electricity are natural monopolies. This means that there is “naturally” a single supplier that emerges in each location (or corridor for transmission). Imagine if several suppliers wanted to have poles along our streets! It doesn’t happen. However, there are already 11 electricity distributors with a monopoly in Québec: Hydro-Québec, 9 cities and a cooperative. Hydro-Québec is not the only distributor. For transmission, some companies have lines, such as Rio Tinto, and some lines have been built in partnership. Once again, Hydro-Québec is not alone.
  • Monopoly (bis): The production of electricity and the retail sale of electricity are not natural monopolies. In several regions, such as the European Union, several producers compete and sell electricity on an open market. Electricity retailers buy and sell this energy to consumers proposing various plans, much like we see in the telecommunications industry. Electricity is delivered from producers to consumers using the natural monopoly of transmission and distribution companies. This 4-stage structure (production-transmission-distribution-retail) is common, and Québec’s vertically integrated structure is more the exception than the rule.
  • Price regulation: Monopoly means price regulation. Transmission and distribution prices are always regulated to ensure a fair return on prudent investments; sometimes performance incentives (reliability, costs) are imposed, as in Great Britain or Alberta. Where production and retail are competitive, regulation can be light, mainly to ensure that prices and conditions of service are fair, and to ensure that competition works for the benefit of consumers. Also, it should be noted that prices must be regulated even for a state monopoly.
  • Nationalization (or privatization): The nationalization of electricity production and delivery in Québec, a legacy of the Quiet Revolution, is not seriously questioned: no one will want to sell Hydro-Québec, as Hydro One was in Ontario a few years ago. The nationalization of private electricity companies has made it possible to accelerate electrification (helping the trade balance), to develop the industrial sector of Québec’s economy (electrical equipment and aluminum), and to develop the service sector (consulting engineering and computer science). However, nationalization does not mean that the private sector has no role to play or that Hydro-Québec should be the sole producer. 

Beyond words, the important thing is to set the right goals and use the levers at our disposal to achieve them, understanding the advantages and disadvantages of each model. 

Des définitions claires pour une discussion énergisante

Dans le débat entourant le projet de loi à venir sur Hydro-Québec, beaucoup d’opinions circulent. Malheureusement, on y mélange plusieurs concepts, ce qui embrouille la discussion. Voici donc quelques définitions pour éclairer les lecteurs.

  • Monopole : Le transport et la distribution d’électricité sont des monopoles naturels. Ça veut dire qu’il y a «?naturellement?» un seul fournisseur qui émerge dans chaque endroit (ou corridor pour le transport). Imaginez si plusieurs fournisseurs voulaient avoir des poteaux le long de nos rues?! Ça ne se fait pas. Cependant, il y a déjà au Québec 11 distributeurs d’électricité avec un monopole : Hydro-Québec, 9 villes et une coopérative. Hydro-Québec n’est donc pas le seul distributeur. Pour le transport, certaines entreprises ont des lignes, comme Rio Tinto, et certaines lignes ont été construites en partenariat, comme avec les Mohawks vers les États-Unis. Encore ici, Hydro-Québec n’est pas seule.
  • Monopole (bis) : La production d’électricité et la vente au détail de l’électricité ne sont pas des monopoles naturels. Dans plusieurs régions, comme dans l’Union européenne, plusieurs producteurs se concurrencent pour faire de l’électricité vendue sur un marché ouvert. Les détaillants d’électricité achètent et revendent cette énergie aux consommateurs, selon divers plans, un peu comme on le voit dans l’industrie des télécommunications. L’électricité est livrée des producteurs aux consommateurs en utilisant le monopole naturel des entreprises de transport et de distribution. Cette structure à 4 étapes (production-transport-distribution-détail) est commune, et la structure largement intégrée verticalement du Québec est plus l’exception que la règle. Cependant, il y a aussi au Québec plusieurs autres producteurs : en éolien (Boralex, Kruger, Innergex, Énergir, etc.), avec de petites centrales hydroélectriques, certaines entreprises (comme Rio Tinto), et même certaines municipalités (comme Sherbrooke).
  • Réglementation des prix : Qui dit monopole dit réglementation des prix. Les prix de transport et de distribution sont toujours réglementés pour assurer un rendement correct sans être indus, forçant des investissements prudents?; parfois, les incitatifs à la performance (fiabilité, coûts) sont imposés, comme en Grande-Bretagne ou en Alberta. Là où la production et le détail sont concurrentiels, la réglementation peut être légère, essentiellement pour s’assurer que les prix et les conditions de services sont équitables, et pour s’assurer que la concurrence fonctionne pour le bien des consommateurs. Aussi, notons que les prix doivent être réglementés même pour un monopole d’État. Au Québec, la Régie de l’énergie est responsable de la réglementation du transport, de la distribution et de la vente au détail de l’électricité.
  • Nationalisation (ou privatisation) : La nationalisation est le transfert à l’état de la propriété d’entreprises privées. La nationalisation de la production et de la livraison de l’électricité au Québec, héritage de la Révolution tranquille, n’est pas sérieusement remise en question : personne ne voudra vendre Hydro-Québec au privé, à l’exemple d’Hydro One en Ontario il y a quelques années. La nationalisation des entreprises privées d’électricité, d’abord en 1944 puis en 1963, a permis, entre autres, d’accélérer l’électrification (aidant à la balance commerciale), de développer le secteur industriel secondaire (équipement électrique et aluminium), et de développer le secteur tertiaire (génie-conseil et informatique). Cependant, la nationalisation ne veut pas dire que le privé n’a aucun rôle à jouer ni qu’Hydro-Québec est le seul producteur, transporteur, ou distributeur. 

Au-delà des mots, l’important est de fixer les bons objectifs et d’utiliser les leviers à notre disposition pour les atteindre, en comprenant bien les avantages et les inconvénients de chaque modèle. 

Ce que signifie l’électricité à coût marginal zéro

La majeure partie de l’électricité produite dans le monde provient de la combustion du charbon ou du gaz naturel. Le nucléaire, l’hydroélectricité, l’énergie éolienne et l’énergie solaire à faibles émissions constituent le reste de la production. (J’écris ceci du Québec, où l’électricité provient principalement de l’hydroélectricité.) En d’autres termes, pour la plupart des gens dans le monde, utiliser un kilowattheure d’électricité, c’est un peu comme brûler un peu de charbon ou de gaz naturel. Mais cela change rapidement : en 2025, l’Agence internationale de l’énergie montre que la part des sources à faibles émissions se rapproche des combustibles fossiles dans la production mondiale d’électricité.

Utiliser le charbon ou le gaz naturel pour produire de l’électricité signifie que la production de chaque unité d’énergie électrique (kilowattheures ou kWh) coûte de l’argent : il faut acheter le combustible. En revanche, une caractéristique commune de l’électricité à faibles émissions est que le coût marginal de production et de livraison est pratiquement nul.

  • Les sources solaire, éolienne et hydroélectrique au fil de l’eau peuvent produire de l’électricité tant que le soleil, le vent ou l’écoulement de l’eau est disponible. Réduire la production ne réduit pas les coûts sociétaux.
  • Pour l’hydroélectricité à réservoir («?grande hydro?»), c’est un peu plus compliqué. Il n’y a pas de frais d’exploitation pour ouvrir les vannes et générer plus, et pas d’économies à fermer. Cependant, la production épuise le réservoir en amont, de sorte qu’il peut y avoir un coût d’opportunité si cette énergie pouvait être vendue à des moments différents pour un prix plus élevé. Cependant, ces centrales hydroélectriques doivent aussi maintenir un débit minimal et la gestion de plusieurs centrales le long d’un réseau fluvial nécessite des compromis, de sorte qu’elles ne sont pas entièrement pilotables. Néanmoins, les coûts marginaux d’exploitation sont nuls.
  • Les centrales nucléaires sont souvent conçues pour fonctionner à une puissance constante, avec des montées et baisses de puissance mesurées en jours. Certaines centrales nucléaires plus nouvelles peuvent mieux varier leur production, mais le seul coût supplémentaire est celui de l’uranium, qui est très petit. Réduire la production d’une centrale nucléaire ne réduit pas vraiment les coûts.
  • Enfin, les coûts du réseau de transport et de distribution sont également fixes à court terme.

Ainsi, dans un système alimenté par des sources autres que fossiles, les coûts sont constants à court terme, du moins jusqu’à sa capacité de production ou de transport. Lorsque la demande s’approche de la capacité du système, les coûts marginaux augmentent soudainement. Pour équilibrer l’offre et la demande dans un système contraint, l’opérateur du système prendra des mesures coûteuses telles que :

  • Démarrer des générateurs fossiles, tels que les centrales au gaz naturel, qui sont coûteuses à exploiter.
  • Faire appel aux batteries en réseau, achetant cette énergie à certains taux précédemment convenus.
  • Importer de l’électricité supplémentaire d’autres régions.
  • Piloter des charges contrôlables, comme la climatisation et les chauffe-eau des clients résidentiels.
  • Payer les grands clients industriels, comme les alumineries, pour réduire leur charge.

Ainsi, en fin de compte, un kilowattheure supplémentaire est soit «?gratuit?» (n’ajoute pas aux coûts du système), soit très coûteux (près de la capacité du système).

Cette caractéristique de tout-ou-rien soulève quelques questions pour la conception des tarifs et du marché.

Les tarifs réglementés sont conçus pour recouvrer les coûts du système, mais dans un système à faibles émissions, ils n’augmentent que pendant les périodes de pointe critiques, généralement quelques heures par an. Les tarifs de prix de pointe critiques et de remise de pointe critique peuvent donc être un meilleur signal pour les clients que les tarifs fixes selon l’heure de consommation appliqués 365 jours par an. (Les tarifs de pointe critique et les tarifs horaires peuvent être utilisés en même temps, surtout lorsque de grands générateurs non distribuables sont présents sur le système, comme en Ontario.) D’autre part, les tarifs en temps réel, qui varient constamment avec les coûts du marché, pourraient signifier que les clients sont confrontés à des prix extrêmement élevés pendant les pointes, ce qui peut conduire à l’injustice.

Dans de nombreuses régions, l’électricité est achetée et vendue dans un marché ouvert de l’énergie (mesurée en kWh, une unité d’énergie) entre les producteurs et les détaillants. Le coût marginal des générateurs fossiles fixe le prix de clôture du marché, les producteurs non émetteurs soumissionnant à zéro, sachant que tout montant supérieur à zéro est mieux que rien. Que se passe-t-il lorsqu’un système n’a que (ou presque que) des sources non émettrices?? Le prix de clôture reste à zéro la plupart du temps. Oups, ce n’est pas bon pour les affaires. Dans ces cas, un marché de capacité (mesuré en kW, une unité de puissance) peut être formé. Dans un marché de capacité, les producteurs sont payés pour la capacité potentielle qu’ils peuvent fournir pendant les périodes de pointe, que leurs actifs soient appelés ou non. Par conséquent, un plus grand nombre d’administrations compteront sur les marchés de capacité dans un avenir à faibles émissions. Une autre approche consiste à se passer entièrement des marchés et à opter pour un accord d’achat d’électricité entre une agence d’achat (ou un service public) et des producteurs d’électricité. D’autres approches mixtes peuvent également être trouvées dans le monde entier. Nous sommes encore en train d’apprendre à concevoir au mieux les marchés de l’électricité avec un réseau sans émission, et ce sujet est en évolution.

En fin de compte, attendez-vous à payer différemment pour l’électricité et les producteurs seront indemnisés différemment. Parfois, les prix de l’électricité seront moins élevés, mais parfois plus élevés qu’ils ne le sont actuellement. Cette transformation économique est similaire à certains égards à ce qui s’est passé dans les télécommunications. Il y a trente ans, nous payions pour chaque appel interurbain et chaque appel cellulaire, à des taux mesurés en dollars par minute dans le cas des appels internationaux. De nos jours, nous payons des frais fixes pour une énorme bande passante ou de grands blocs de données, et nous ne réfléchissons pas à deux fois avant de faire une vidéoconférence FaceTime avec des proches à l’étranger. Payons-nous moins pour les télécommunications?? Eh bien, pas vraiment dans l’ensemble, et c’est beaucoup plus compliqué, mais nous en obtenons beaucoup plus pour notre argent. La même chose se produira avec l’électricité.

What Zero Marginal Cost Electricity Means

Most of electricity generated in the world comes from burning coal or natural gas, with low emission nuclear, hydro, wind and solar making up the rest of the generation. (I’m writing this from Québec, where electricity comes mostly from hydro.) In other words, for most people in the world, using a kilowatt-hour of electricity is a bit like burning a bit of coal or natural gas. But that’s quickly changing: in 2025, the International Energy Agency shows that the share of low-emission sources is approaching fossil fuels in global electricity generation.

Using coal or natural gas to generate electricity means that producing each unit of electric energy (kilowatt-hours or kWh) costs money: one needs to buy the fossil stuff. In contrast, a common characteristic of low-emission electricity is that the marginal cost of generation and delivery is practically zero.

  • Solar, wind, and run-of-river hydro may produce electricity as long as the sun, the wind or the flow of water is available. Turning off generation doesn’t reduce societal costs.
  • For reservoir hydro (“big hydro”), it is a bit more complicated. There’s no out-of-pocket cost to open the valves and to generate more, and no savings to turn off. However, generating depletes the upstream reservoir, so there may be an opportunity cost if this energy could be sold at different times for a higher price. However, these hydro plants must maintain minimum flow and managing multiple plants along a river system requires trade-offs, so they aren’t fully dispatchable. Still, marginal operating costs are zero.
  • Nuclear plants are often designed to run at a constant power, with ramp-up and ramp-down measured in days. Some newer nuclear plants can better vary their generation, but the only additional cost is that of uranium, which is very small. Reducing output of a nuclear generator doesn’t really reduce costs.
  • Finally, the costs of the transmission and distribution grid are also fixed in the short run.

Thus, in a system powered by non-emitting sources, costs are constant in the short run, at least up to its generation or transmission capacity. When demand gets near the system capacity, marginal costs suddenly increase. To balance supply and demand in a constrained system, the system operator will take costly measures such as:

  • Dispatching fossil generators, such as natural gas plants, which are costly to run.
  • Dispatching grid batteries, buying this power at some previously agreed to rates.
  • Importing additional electricity from other jurisdictions.
  • Dispatching controllable loads, like HVAC and water heaters for residential customers.
  • Paying large industrial customers, like aluminum smelters, to reduce their load.

So, in the end, an additional kilowatt-hour is either “free” (does not add to system costs) or very expensive (near system capacity).

This all-or-nothing characteristic raises a few issues for tariff and market design.

Regulated tariffs are designed to recover the system costs, which only increase during critical peaks, typically a few hours per year. Critical Peak Pricing and Critical Peak Rebate tariffs may therefore be a better signal to customers than fixed Time-Of-Use (TOU) tariffs applied 365 days a year. (Both critical peak and TOU tariffs may be used at the same time, especially when large non-dispatchable generators are present on the system, like in Ontario.) On the other hand, Real Time Pricing tariffs, which vary constantly with market costs, could mean that customers face extremely high prices during peaks, and this can lead to unfairness.

In many jurisdictions, electricity is bought and sold in an open energy market (measured in kWh, a unit of energy) between producers and retailers. The marginal cost of fossil generators set the closing energy market price, with non-emitting producers bidding at zero, knowing that any closing amount above zero is better than nothing. What happens when a system has only (or mostly) non-emitting sources? The closing price remains at zero most of the time. Oops, that’s not good for business. In those cases, a capacity market (measured in kW, a unit of power) may be formed. In a capacity market, producers are paid for the potential capacity they can provide during peaks whether or not their assets are called upon. Hence, more jurisdictions will rely on capacity markets in a low-emission future. Another approach is to get away with markets entirely and go with power purchase agreement between a purchasing agency (or utility) and power producers. Other, mixed approaches may also be found around the world. We are still learning how to best design electricity markets with a non-emitting grid, and this topic is ongoing.

In the end, expect to pay differently for electricity and producers will be compensated differently. At times, electricity prices will be less, but sometime higher, than they are now. This economic transformation is similar in some ways to what happened in telecommunications. Thirty years ago, we paid for each long-distance calls and cell calls, at rates measured in dollars per minute in the case of international calls. Nowadays, we pay a flat fee for the huge bandwidth or large data blocks, and we don’t think twice before doing a FaceTime videoconference with loved ones overseas. Do we pay less for telecom? Well, not really overall, and it’s a lot more complicated, but we get much more out of our money. The same thing will happen with electricity.

How Not-to-Succeed in the Next Decade of Energy Transition

The 2020s promise to be a momentous time for the electricity industry, and I wanted to take some time to reflect on what businesses might need to succeed through the energy industry transition. I might have a privileged perspective on this, having worked with utilities, vendors and investors, first in the IT and telecom industries as they went through their transitions, and then mostly in the electricity industry for the last 20 years. This does not mean that I can’t be wrong (I know – I’ve been wrong many times), but perhaps my views will help others be right. 

I’ve structured this post as a series of “don’ts”, based in part on actual IT and telecom examples that I’ve lived through – I’ve put these examples in italic, but I left the names out to protect the innocents. I found that many businesses have short-term views that lead them down dead-end paths, and I might be more useful in showing known pitfalls than trying to predict the future. 

Don’t Fight a Declining Cost Curve

The IT, telecom and, now, electricity industries are all seeing declining cost curves. The best known one is Moore’s Law, the observation that the density of integrated circuits (and hence the cost of computing) halves every 2 years. Moore’s Law is nearly 60 years old and still strong. It gave us iPhones more powerful now than supercomputers of a generation ago, even though my iPhone ends up in my pocket most of the time, doing nothing. These days, the electricity industry sees the cost of wind and solar energy as well as that of electricity storage dropping at a rate of 10% to 20% per year, with no end in sight.[i]

In IT, telecom and, now, electricity, this also leads toward zero marginal cost, the situation where producing an additional unit (a Google search, a FaceTime call or a kWh) costs nothing (or almost nothing). 

During the IT and telecom transitions, many startups proposed solutions to optimize the use of (still) expensive information processing assets. Some sought to extend the life of previous generations of equipment (like a PBX) by adding some intelligence to it (a virtual attendant), while others were dependent on a price point (like dollars per minutes for overseas calls) that simply collapsed (calls are essentially free now). 

If your business case depends on the cost of energy or the cost of storage remaining where they are, ask yourself, what if the cost goes down 50%? That’s only 3 years of decline at 20%/year. After 10 years, costs will be only 10% of what they are now. Can you survive with near-zero marginal costs? If your solution aims to optimize capital costs, will it matter in a few years? Or, will people just do as they do now, with a do-nothing iPhone supercomputer in their pocket?

Don’t Think That Transition Will Go 2% a Year Over 50 Years

Phone companies were depreciating their copper wires and switches over decades. Phone utilities were highly regarded companies, imbued with a duty for public service and providing lifelong employment to their loyal employees. Service was considered inflexible, but everyone could afford a local line, which was cross subsidized by expensive long-distance calls and business lines. Things were simple and predictable.

In 1980, McKinsey & Company was commissioned by AT&T (whose Bell Labs had invented cellular telephony) to forecast cell phone penetration in the U.S. by 2000. The consultant predicted 900,000 cell phone subscribers in 2000 – the actual figure is 109,000,000. Based on this legendary mistake, AT&T decided there was not much future to these toys. A decade later, AT&T had to acquire McCaw Cellular for $12.6 Billion.[ii]

In 1998, I was operating the largest international IP telephony network in the world, although it was bleeding edge and tiny in comparison to AT&T and other large traditional carriers. Traditional carriers were waiting for IP telephony to fail, as the sound quality was poor, it was not efficiently using the available bandwidth, it was illegal in many countries, etc. The history did not play out as expected. In 2003, Skype was launched, the iPhone, in 2006. Today, you can’t make a phone call anymore that is not IP somewhere along its path. 

I’m seeing the same lack of vision in energy industry. For example, the International Energy Agency (IEA) is famous for being wrong, year after year, in lowballing the rise of solar and wind energy in its scenarios.[iii]

Another example is the rise of electric vehicles. There are about 77 million light-duty vehicles sold in the world, and this number is flat or slightly declining.[iv] Of these, about 2 million electric vehicles were sold in 2019, but the number of EVs sold in increasing 50% every year.[v] In other words, the number of internal combustion vehicles is clearly decreasing and the growth is only coming from EVs. Looking at their dashboards, car manufacturers are quickly reducing their investment in developing internal combustion vehicles, especially engines.[vi] Disinvestment in upstream activity means that internal combustion vehicles will fall behind newer EVs and become less and less appealing. It won’t take 50 years for most light-duty vehicles to be electric – a decade, perhaps.

Don’t Count on Regulatory Barriers for Protection

Telecom carriers fought deregulation and competition, teeth and nails. Back in the 1950s, AT&T went to the US supreme court to prevent customer from using a plastic attachment on the mouthpiece of telephones to increase call privacy – it was called Hush-A-Phone. AT&T owned the telephones and forbid customers from using Hush-A-Phone. However, AT&T lost the court battle, and Hush-A-Phone was sold legally from then on. This landmark decision is seen as the start of telecom deregulation in North America.

The IP telephony network that I mentioned earlier was indeed illegal in some of the countries we operated in. It didn’t matter. We had plenty of partners willing to bypass local monopolies, even if illegal in their countries, and customers willing to make cheaper international calls, even if the quality was not always so great. 

Regulatory barriers are only as strong as policy-makers make them. When constituents see an opportunity to save money or simply have choice, they pressure the policy-makers to change the rules – or elect new ones more attuned to moods of consumers. It’s just a matter of time. 

Don’t Take Customers Nor Suppliers for Granted

In 1997, at a time when cellular phones were still a luxury and the Internet was still a novelty, an Angus-Reid survey of the Canadian public put Bell Canada #2 among most admired corporations in Canada[vii], and it had been among the most trusted companies in Canada for decades. Yet, in 2017, Bell Canada ranked #291 in a University of Victoria brand trust survey[viii]. People love their Apple or Samsung phones, are addicted to Facebook to stay in touch with friends, naturally turn to Google for any question, and use Microsoft Skype to see remote family members, but they now mostly hate their phone company. 

Obviously, Bell is still around and making money, but one can only wonder how things could have been if Bell had played its hand differently. (In 1997, none of iPhones, Facebook, Google and Skype existed).

Suppliers to electric utilities should also listen to this lesson. Northern Telecom (Nortel), AT&T Bell Labs and Alcatel were among the large traditional equipment vendors to telephone utilities. However, a startup was founded in 1984, designing routing equipment for IT networks used in university networks. Over the years, it expanded into all sorts of datacom and telecom equipment – all telecom companies eventually standardized on this new vendor. Northern Telecom and the others went bankrupt or were merged and acquired to the point they could not be recognized. In the process, some telephone companies were left with unserviceable hardware. 

This startup company is called Cisco Systems and is now the largest telecom vendor in the world. 

The same pattern is playing out in electricity. On one hand, you have many utilities that do not understand that many customers want choice. On the other hand, you have vendors, like GE and ABB, that are in turmoil. 

Will you be the future Google or Cisco of electricity? Or the next Nortel?

Don’t Follow the Herd

Full disclosure: I’m a career business consultant. Caveat Emptor. 

The reason for this disclosure is that consultants are great at announcing bold trends that often do not pan out. There is a great herd mentality among consultants, and it carries over to their customers. 

Twenty years ago, one of my clients was one of the early Application Service Providers, a business concept where small businesses could access shared personal computer applications over the Internet. The idea was to reduce the cost of maintaining software installed in PCs and to reduce the hardware requirements of PCs. This client was unknowingly fighting the declining cost curve of computers. It went bankrupt (and my last invoices were not paid). 

The concept of application service providers was heavily promoted by consultancies like Gartner, who presented it as the future of business computing. I guess that Microsoft disagreed. 

I see similar fast-fashion concepts going through the electricity industry. Walking the floor at the Distributech Conference in 2018, it was all about microgrids. In 2019, it was distributed energy resources. We will see what will be fashionable in January 2020. 

My recommendation when you hear the same concept over and over again is asking yourself: is this a real trend or am I in an echo chamber? With many new consultants flocking to the electric utility industry – I call them tourists – , you can hear many concepts that are taken for truth but really too complex to be implemented or unlikely in the fragmented regulatory environment that we have. 

Closing Thoughts

In the end, keep cool: sound engineering, good economics and great customer service will always win.

Which leads me to offer you this quote:

If I’ve heard correctly, all of you can see ahead to what the future holds but your knowledge of the present is not clear.
—DANTE, Inferno, Canto X

All this being said, have a great Holiday season and see you soon in 2020!


[i]                 See this previous blog posts, https://benoit.marcoux.ca/blog/lower-and-lower-energy-prices-from-wind-and-solar-pv/, for an in-depth discussion of cost decline in wind and solar energy, accessed 20191220. 

[ii]                See https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/38716/did-mckinsey-co-tell-att-there-was-no-market-for-mobile-phones, accessed 20191220. 

[iii]               See this previous blog post, https://benoit.marcoux.ca/blog/wind-and-solar-pv-defied-expectations/, for a chart of how wrong the IEA has been, accessed 20191220. 

[iv]                See https://www.statista.com/statistics/200002/international-car-sales-since-1990/, accessed 20191220. 

[v]                 See https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2019 and http://www.ev-volumes.com/country/total-world-plug-in-vehicle-volumes/, accessed 20191220. 

[vi]                See https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bmarcoux_daimler-stops-developing-internal-combustion-activity-6580481304071065600-vRK8, accessed 20191220. 

[vii]               The Fourth Annual “Canada’s Most Respected Corporations” Survey, Angus Reid Group, Inc., 1998, page 5.

[viii]              The Gustavson Brand Trust Index, Peter B. Gustavson School of Business, University of Victoria, 2017. 

Telecom as a Model, not a Service, to Electric Utilities

On September 27, 2017, I presented at the Utilities Technology Council of Canada. I have attached the presentation, and here is the abstract.

Abstract: The telecom industry has seen tremendous changes, replacing in just a few short years the Plain Old Telephone System that took over a century to build with the Internet and cellular networks. Since telecom and electric utilities have a lot in common, like linear assets, large customer base and territory, and technology-driven culture, what can we learn from the transformation of telecom to better manage the ongoing technological changes in electric utilities?