The UK Electricity Supply Industry was sold into private ownership in 1990 and was followed by the flotation of the National Coal Board in 1994. Until this time successive Governments had ensured a market for the coal produced by the National Coal Board by prohibiting the Electricity Supply Industry from purchasing foreign coal and for decades the Electricity Supply Industry had been hostage to the fortunes of the coal industry. At the time of privatisation of the Electricity Supply Industry in 1990 the Government stated that it could no longer guarantee that all of the coal consumed by the new, privately owned Generators would be from British mines. Since these changes, the conventional merit-order for the dispatch of generating plant in mixed-fuel systems has been superseded by scheduling of plant in response to commercial advantage. Gas-fired generation is now used to meet base-load demand, while coal-fired plant, traditionally a base-load generation source, is being forced to take an increasingly mid-merit position. While fuel for base-load generation is bought on long-term contracts, fuel for mid-merit generation is purchased more effectively on the medium-term market. It is therefore becoming more important for Generators to recognise the strategic issues encompassed in medium-term coal purchase and to respond accordingly. The decision to buy coal can be followed through a number of stages from the initial identification of the requirement to make a purchase, through the tendering process to the final selection of suppliers. Understanding a supplier is essential to this process and to making effective organizational buying decisions. Analysis of past performance of coal suppliers at each stage has lead to the application of supplier assessment techniques to the development of a 'Coal Supplier Grading System': Utilisation of this grading system benefits the Generator by assisting the purchaser to ensure that the best suppliers are selected while opportunities offered by new entrants into the market are not missed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:641512 |
| Date | January 1997 |
| Creators | Bellhouse, Gillian Margaret |
| Publisher | University of Edinburgh |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://hdl.handle.net/1842/13928 |
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