ANALYSIS OF THE PRODUCTION EFFICIENCY OF THE FRENCH POWER DISTRIBUTION NETWORK OPERATOR IN LIGHT OF ITS BUSINESS MODEL EVOLUTION, FROM OPERATING THE NETWORK TO MANAGING THE DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM

摘要

The liberalization of European electricity markets, which started back in 1999, flagged a set of major turning points in France. Following the unbundling of the national electricity firm (EDF) was created Enedis in 2008, the French national power distribution operator. The core business model of Enedis has since consisted in securing concession contracts with local authorities and municipalities, which own the distribution infrastructures, in exchange for the operation and maintenance of the medium-and-low voltage power network. Over the past decade, the growing urge to comply with the requirements of sustainable development, combined with the digitalization of public utilities in the wake of the “smart city” concept, have prompted Enedis to develop new business models: from "pure" electricity distribution to the deployment of new innovative energy services priced at marginal cost, the French distribution network operator fully commits to supporting its concessions (the French local authorities) in their energetic transition. However, as a regulated natural monopoly for electricity distribution on 95% of the French territory, Enedis must ensure the best possible quality of delivery for its public service, and guarantee a minimum level of firm performance to citizens and public authorities. Therefore, the company is to determine how its innovative solutions (e.g. deployment of smart meters and data processing, delivery of exploratory studies for urban planning processes or for the insertion of electric vehicles, development of open data portals and web applications, etc.) still manage to ensure a certain threshold of production efficiency for the firm. This paper is organized in four parts as follows: after introducing the power distribution landscape in France as well as the diversification into new services being sustained by Enedis, we put forward the relevance of evaluating the determinants of production inefficiency for power network firms as demonstrated by the academic literature. We then perform a quantitative analysis of several different variables which may discriminate the production efficiency of Enedis, according to the geographic concession in which the firm operates the delivery of its new services (regional branch). These variables will be plugged into a flexible cost function, in order to assess the degree of heterogeneity in production efficiency among these concessions. Ultimately, the results shall give insights about the most consistent variables to plug into this cost function.