Is electricity a service or a product

[cuky2000]

Can someone advise if the electric energy provided by a utility company is a service or a product? There is any difference if is at the generator, transmission, or distribution side? What about the battery energy storage system either residential or utility scale application?

 

[Gr8blu]

In my opinion:
The production of electric power (by traditional generation or other means) is a service.
The delivery of electric power (to a load) considers that the delivered material (electric power) is a product.

If something is sold (such as power from a rotating machine, piezoelectric charge device, photovoltaics, battery storage system, etc.), it is a product.

Converting energy to motion for more than half a century

 

[dpc]

My opinion would be the opposite of Gr8blu. Production of electric energy is a product. Transmission and distribution is a service. In the US, these two functions have been largely (and somewhat artificially) separated in terms of regulation and accounting.

 

[cuky2000]

From the legal standpoint, utility prefer to call the supply of electrical energy as a service since there is legal precedents to consider the electric energy provided after the meter as a product.