A Mixed Nordic Experience: Implementing Competitive Retail Electricity Markets for Household Customers

Although the Nordic countries were among the first to develop competition in the electricity industry, it took a long time to make retail competition work. In Norway and Sweden a considerable number of households are actively using the market but very few households are active in Finland and Denmark. One problem has been institutional barriers involving metering, limited unbundling of distribution and supply, and limited access to reliable information on contracts and prices.