Following is a more detailed outline of content contained in the Electric Industry Overview online course.

Introduction

• Course objectives
• Why electricity is unique and critical
• Units

Electric Customers

• The three key types of end-use customers (residential, commercial, industrial)
• Wholesale customers (utilities, marketers)
• Number of customers in each class
• Usage patterns for each class
• The importance of peak demand and overall system demand curves
• Key residential, commercial, and industrial uses of electricity and the resulting demand curves
• Aggregate demand, daily and seasonal load curves, annual and seasonal peak demand
• What affects demand curves
• Customer needs
• Services available to satisfy customer needs (bundled utility service, unbundled utility distribution with competitive supply service, self-generation, alternate fuels, energy efficiency)
• Typical utility rate structures (flat rate, time-of-use, demand charges, green power)
• Average rates and electric prices by state and by customer type
• Why rates vary by customer type

The Electric Delivery System

• An overview of the electric delivery system
• Electric circuits
• The five steps involved in system planning
• How supply planning is different in competitive markets
• Transmission and distribution system planning
• The various generation types and their characteristics (operational, financial, and environmental)
• Generation costs (capital, variable, and levelized)
• The effect of fuel and emission costs
• Operational characteristics including location, start time, and ramp flexibility
• How demand side management is used as an alternative to generation
• The generation supply curve (how supply is matched to demand)
• The electrical transmission system (description, costs, and characteristics)
• The electrical distribution system (description, costs, and characteristics)
• System reliability
• The Smart Grid
• Information technology

Electric System Operations

• The four key physical characteristics of electrical systems
• The functions of a system (control area) operator
• Which organizations provide the system operator function including utilities, power agencies, and ISOs/RTOs
• Regulation and oversight of reliability by NERC and FERC
• How system operators run the system including demand forecasting, unit scheduling and dispatch, ramping units in real time, and monitoring
• The concept of least cost dispatch subject to constraints
• What ancillary services are and how they are scheduled and used in real time (frequency regulation, spinning reserve, non-spinning reserve, supplemental reserve, voltage support or VARs, black start)
• Transmission scheduling and power flow models
• How a system operator balances the system in real time
• How cascading outages are avoided
• System operators in a competitive market

Electric Regulation

• What regulation is 
• Why the electric industry is regulated including the goals of regulators
• The traditional vertically integrated electric market structure
• Market participants under the vertically integrated structure including various types of utilities, and non-utility generators and suppliers
• Unbundling of the vertically integrated structure
• The four market models (ranging from highly regulated to less regulated) plus a hybrid
• Regions in the U.S. with competitive wholesale and retail markets
• Five functions of regulation
• Who the regulators are (federal, state, and local) and what areas of the industry they regulate
• The federal and state regulatory compacts
• Four examples of regulatory proceedings (rulemakings, rate cases, certificate cases, complaint cases) and how this process works
• The cost-of-service ratemaking process, step by step
• Incentive regulation and where this is used
• Market-based ratemaking and where this is used
• The ways in which regulation impacts utilities and other market participants

Electricity Marketplace Overview

• The variety of market structures in the U.S. and how they evolved
• Traditional market participants and their roles (IOUs, munis and PUDs, co-ops, federal power agencies, ESCOs, IPPs, and electric marketers)
• Competitive market participants and their roles (merchant generators, ISOs and RTOs, electronic exchanges and clearinghouses, wholesale marketers and retail marketers, financial services companies, transmission companies, UDCs, load-serving entities, and ESCOs)
• How participants make money (regulated and competitive)
• Wholesale transactions and services (energy, capacity, ancillary services, transmission rights, financial risk management)
• Retail transactions and services (energy, energy efficiency, DSM, power reliability, power quality, energy information)
• How prices are set in regulated markets
• How prices are set in competitive markets including locational marginal pricing
• Supply and demand and why traditional economic rules don’t always apply to the electric business
• Why electric prices can be volatile
• Electric market risks and how they can be mitigated

The Future of Electricity

• Load growth
• Demand side management (DSM)
• Electric vehicles and space heating
• Climate change
• Electric storage
• Smart grids, microgrids, and distributed resources
• Information technology
• The future of regulation, technology, markets, and the workplace
• The top 10 challenges
• The energy company of tomorrow