Major price spikes could recur in the Midwest power market thissummer, according to a key consulting group. “I would say it’s like50-50 whether we’re going to have very gross spikes there,” saidJudah Rose, vice president of wholesale power for ICF KaiserInternational Inc. “It looks like we may luck out, but it’s stillvery, very dicey” in the Midwest region. A major factor is “no oneknows who’s in charge of reliability in the Midwest,” he toldGasMart/Power ’99 in Dallas. Rose believes the federal governmentneeds to intervene to settle the issue once and for all. “There isnothing more federal than the intersected power grid. The federalgovernment needs.to set up who’s in charge of reliability, figureout what the rules are.”

In a related issue, Rose said he supports multi-utilityindependent system operators (ISOs) – as opposed to single-utilitytranscos – for the operation of transmission operations. Hebelieves ISOs would get the grid more organized on a multi-regionalbasis.

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