Electric utility
type of electric power company
An electric utility, power utility, electric company, or power company is a company in the electric power industry (often a public utility) that engages in electricity generation and distribution of electricity for sale generally in a regulated market. Electric utilities are major providers of energy in most countries.
Electric utilities include investor owned, publicly owned, cooperatives, and nationalized entities. They may be engaged in all or only some aspects of the industry. Electricity markets are also considered electric utilities—these entities buy and sell electricity, acting as brokers, but usually do not own or operate generation, transmission, or distribution facilities. Utilities are regulated by local and national authorities.
Electric utilities are facing increasing demands including aging infrastructure, reliability, and regulation.
In 2009, the French company EDF was the world's largest producer of electricity.
Organization
Power transactions
An electric power system is a group of generation, transmission, distribution, communication, and other facilities that are physically connected. The flow of electricity within the system is maintained and controlled by dispatch centers which can buy and sell electricity based on system requirements.
The public source identifies “Electric utility” as type of electric power company. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Electric, utility and type.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1326624. The first chronological checks are 2009.
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This entry incorporates text from “Electric utility” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.