A new Western Resource Adequacy Program task force has been charged with revising the WRAP tariff to clarify that participants can rely on a specific category of CAISO transmission service to count remote resources toward their “forward showing” requirements under the program.  

While CAISO and California’s non-CAISO utilities, already subject to a state-run RA program, are not participating in the WRAP, California’s grid is likely to function as the key “wheel-through” corridor for RA sharing among the WRAP’s Northwest and Desert Southwest participants due to the shortage of alternate routes. 

Creation of the CAISO TX Task Force came at the suggestion of Salt River Project (SRP), which last year raised the concern that CAISO’s description of its own firm transmission product as “high-priority wheeling-through” is not recognized anywhere in the tariff of the WRAP, a reliability program administered by the Western Power Pool (WPP) and operated by SPP.  

That means the tariff does not explicitly equate CAISO’s firmest offering of transmission service with NERC’s Priority 6 or 7 transmission service levels, the minimum level of service the WRAP requires for a participant to count a distant resource toward its RA obligation. 

“This creates ambiguity as to whether CAISO high-priority wheeling-through qualifies as firm transmission under WRAP. This creates uncertainty for participants relying on CAISO high-priority wheeling-through transmission to satisfy WRAP requirements,” SRP wrote in a tariff change request form included in WRAP’s 2025 Work Plan, which was developed by the WRAP Program Review Committee and approved by the WPP’s Board of Directors in June.  

“Without clear recognition, participants may experience compliance risks despite securing the highest available firm transmission from CAISO,” SRP wrote. 

SRP’s proposed solution: to introduce tariff language “that provides clarity on what qualifies as qualifying transmission to evaluate transmission products that do not explicitly use NERC Priority rating.” 

The utility said the change should resolve “uncertainty around transmission compliance” and give participants “confidence that high-priority transmission products that do not use a NERC Priority rating will satisfy WRAP requirements, which will streamline compliance.” 

Speaking during a July 23 meeting to kick off the effort, Maya McNichol, a WPP policy and engagement manager, said WPP considers the CAISO TX Task Force to be an “easy” initiative that should be concluded after three or four meetings over two months.  

“The goal here is to ensure … that WRAP participants can use CAISO high-priority wheeling-through transmission as part of qualifying transmission when doing all of the WRAP things that require transmission,” McNichol said. 

She said the WPP thinks the best approach would be to add a new “WRAP qualifying transmission” definition to the tariff that includes a reference to CAISO’s “high-priority” service, then substitute that definition for any relevant references to “firm transmission” or “forward showing transmission requirement” throughout the WRAP tariff and business process manual. 

At the meeting, task force members elected Jerret Fischer, SRP senior market operations strategy analyst, as the group’s chair. 

The task force will meet next Aug. 1.