EDF customized approach of power quality, an opportunity to meet customer's expectations

The emerging electricity market in Europe has accelerated the move towards the customer with its emphasis on his needs. In that "new" competitive world, is power quality, known to be needed, still a prior concern and how will utilities deal with it ? This paper presents EDF's policy in that matter. The history of power quality policy shows that, after a period devoted to nationwide improvements, EDF turned to more customized approaches. Regular surveys are conducted and used both for marketing studies and for measuring the effectiveness of the policy. Services have gone a step forward with custom power, as described in the experiment. In the future, power quality contracts might become more risk-management oriented. "Electricity as a product" is evolving to a complex combination of systems. The organization of the electric field has an impact on the sharing of responsibilities about delivered power quality. These responsibilities shares will have to be formalized.