Unbundling costs in the energy sector: competitive environment for the customers´ benefits or too costly experiment?

The paper describes process of electricity market liberalization, and concentrates on one phase - unbundling. First part sums up findings on electricity market liberalization, and explains unbundling principles, initial situation and expected outcome. In the second part unbundling costs are analyzed and in the third part, fulfillment of unbundling targets and its contribution to improve end-customer's position are assessed. The authors arrived to conclusion that unbundling contributed to decrease electricity end-price for households in the 2005 - 2008 period, despite substantial unbundling costs. However other factors, such as demand increase and electricity price convergence between the Czech Republic and Germany, were much stronger and caused substantial electricity price increase in the examined period.