Amid the crush of proposals to join or create regionaltransmission organizations (RTOs) filed Monday, the owner andoperator of an electric cooperative system in Alabama urged FERC tofocus its attention on the RTO filings for the Southeast, sayingthey lack genuine regional participation.

With the “possible exception of systems in Florida, the dominantinvestor-owned systems in the Southeast have pursued unilateral,non-collaborative approaches” in forming RTOs, said AlabamaElectric Cooperative (AEC). It especially singled out SouthernCo.’s gridco proposal and the proposal of Duke Power, CarolinaPower & Light, and South Carolina Electric and Gas.

“Of vital importance to AEC, Southern appears to be developing aSouthern-area-only RTO, according affected entities someopportunities to ask questions and comment, but with no realcollaborative participation in the development of the proposal,” ittold the Commission.

“Single-system dominated or company-sized RTOs clearly willinhibit, rather than promote, competitive markets for generation,but this discouraging trend toward the concentration oftransmission control appears to be emerging in the Southeast. TheCommission must take a firm position in requiring true regionalityand real independence as the inviolate benchmarks for RTOs.”

Order 2000 required “transmission-owning entities” to fileMonday proposals to either join an RTO, describe the progress madetowards joining one, or outline the obstacles that are preventingparticipation in an RTO.

AEC said it is actively pursuing the formation of a “genuinelyindependent and truly regional RTO” with three other Southeasternrural electric cooperative systems. But “no large investor-owned orpublic power system in the Southeast expressed any willingness toexplore or discuss the cooperatives’ ‘Southeast RTO’ proposal.”

The proposals for the larger, well-known utilities — such asDayton Power & Light, Virginia Power, First Energy Corp.,Detroit Edison and Tampa Electric — seemed to be prettystraightforward, but the filings of the smaller utilities andcooperatives identified the roadblocks to joining RTOs and otherproblems.

For example, Maine Public Service Co. (MPS) informed FERC thatRTO participation was not “economically feasible at this time” dueto the “unique and electrically isolated nature of the region inwhich [it] owns transmission facilities.” In addition, the “highcosts of RTO participation that would have to be recovered fromMPS’s relatively small load and customer base, weigh against” it,the public utility said.

MPS reported it owns about 392 miles of transmission facilitiesand 1,730 miles of distribution facilities. None are directlyinterconnected with any portion of the U.S. transmission system.However, it told the Commission it is participating in RTOdiscussions taking place in Canada.

Sunflower Electric Power Corp., a generation and transmissioncooperative serving Kansas, said it attended meetings held by theSouthwest Power Pool (SPP) to develop its proposed RTO, and”actively participated” in the merger of MAPP’s RegionalTransmission Committee and the Midwest Independent System Operator(MIOS).

But Sunflower Electric told FERC it decided not to join eitherthe SPP RTO or the MISO because it would incur “substantialeconomic penalties” if it transferred control of its transmissionfacilities to a tax-exempt entity. Both the SPP RTO and the MISOare tax-exempt groups.

Instead, Sunflower Electric said it has joined with othernon-public utilities to investigate the formation of an RTO thatinitially has been named the Crescent Moon Regional TransmissionEntity. “The Crescent Moon proposal at this time appears to offerthe only opportunity for transfer of control to a potentiallytaxable contiguous entity.”

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