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Seams Elimination Efforts Not Seen Delaying Western RTOs
Ongoing efforts in the West to eliminate seams between various power markets shouldn’t delay the formation of regional transmission organizations (RTOs) in that part of the country, officials with various electric grid operators reassured FERC Commissioners last Wednesday.
At its regular agenda meeting, Commissioners got a detailed update from representatives from the California Independent System Operator (CAISO), RTO West and the WestConnect RTO on what’s known as the Seams Steering Group-Western Interconnection (SSG-WI).
The steering group is intended to facilitate the creation of a seamless Western market and for proposing resolutions for issues associated with differences in RTO practices and procedures.
At the meeting, Commissioner Nora Brownell voiced concerns about whether the ongoing seams resolution efforts may delay RTO efforts in the region. “I just need to get clarity here because I’ve heard mixed reviews on the impact of the seams group on RTO development and we don’t want to be dealing with unintended consequences here,” she said.
“We’re a little concerned about what might occur as we get down the road on our timeline,” one RTO official responded. “With the different rates the individual RTOs are going, I think we’re moving on both parallel processes as fast as we can, so I don’t believe it’s delaying anything yet.”
“Without SSG-WI, there isn’t going to be a compatible market in the West and in order to have a compatible market in the West, I think SSG-WI will reduce the time of getting the RTOs to move forward,” said Frank Afranji, appearing on behalf of RTO West.
“Because, otherwise, we’re going to end up with three incompatible systems, possibly, and if that happens then we’re going to have spend quite a bit of time trying to get to one compatible market,” Afranji said. “So, in essence, the way we look at it is, it’s really cutting down on the time [to] create a compatible Western market.”
“Certainly for California, we’re marching forward as quickly as we can to get our implementation in place,” said CAISO’s Elena Schmid. CAISO has launched a project designed to fix flaws and encourage efficient market behavior known as Market Design 2002.
“SSG-WI is not in anyway, that I have been aware of, delaying the implementation of our work,” Schmid said. “We have some of the same people going to some of the working groups, but mainly we have different people going to the working groups, so even on a resource call it is not impeding the work.”
Brownell said that she doesn’t want to see a situation where one of the western RTOs tells FERC in a filing that “we’ve got to delay because we’re working on SSG-WI.”
“We see SSG-WI as helping us get to a compatible market faster than we would if we all three went to our corner,” a grid operator official responded. “We just have to be careful not to get caught in a trap where we get [dragged] into a market design that one of the RTOs can’t live with and some of the big parties that need to be a part of the RTO fall off.”
SSG-WI has created a number of working groups to identify solutions to common problems associated with power grid efficiency.
FERC has directed each of the three regional entities to formally commit to participating in the working groups and has empowered SSG-WI as the forum for resolving “seams” issues in the West. Currently there are five working groups examining electricity issues:
SSG-WI last month filed with the Commission a progress report on its efforts to promote a seamless western market for electricity. The filing also included a discussion about how the three entities that make up the steering group will cooperate with state regulatory agencies and the western governors in the areas they represent.
FERC in September conditionally signed off on a Stage II filing made by participants in RTO West. The following month, the Commission issued a decision telling sponsors of WestConnect that they were also headed in the right direction.
RTO West is being proposed by a coalition of utilities in the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia. The coalition includes Avista Corp., Bonneville Power Administration, British Columbia Hydro and Power Authority, Idaho Power, NorthWestern Energy, Nevada Power Co., PacifiCorp, Portland General Electric, Puget Sound Energy and Sierra Pacific Power.
WestConnect’s utility members are: Arizona Public Service Co., El Paso Electric Co., Public Service Co. of New Mexico and Tucson Electric Power Co.
For more information on SSG-WI go to the group’s website at: https://www.ssg-wi.org/
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