Most radically what the act did was oblige the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which governs the grid, to separate electrical generation from electrical distribution. Utilities, obliged since the late 1970s to buy power from small producers at the same price it would have cost them to make it themselves, were, with the act, taken even more thoroughly out of the generation side of the electricity game. The Energy Policy Act mandated absolute competition in the wholesale power market.
