By Tom Kleckner
An executive committee charged with overseeing administration of SPP‘s Western Energy Imbalance Service (WEIS) last week launched the working group responsible for developing and maintaining the market’s protocols.
The Western Markets Working Group (WMWG) will report to the Western Markets Executive Committee (WMEC), which approved both the group’s scope and its leadership during a March 19 conference call.
The WMWG will work with other stakeholder groups in recommending the protocols and associated Tariff changes to the WMEC and prioritizing approved system and process changes. It will also coordinate with regulators and task forces in implementing the WEIS market.
The committee unanimously approved Basin Electric Power Cooperative’s Valerie Weigel as the WMWG’s chair and Municipal Energy Agency of Nebraska’s Jeff Lindsay as vice-chair. They will serve two-year terms.
The working group will replace the WEIS Protocol Review Task Force, which has been developing the market’s protocols. The WMWG will consist of up to 12 members, with one representative from each non-affiliated signatory to the Western Joint Dispatch Agreement, the contractual arrangement between SPP and WEIS participants that governs SPP’s obligations to administer the market and its compensation.
SPP filed its WEIS Tariff in February, asking for an effective date of Feb. 1, 2021.
The WEIS market is modeled on the Energy Imbalance Service market SPP operated from 2007 to 2014. The RTO will centrally dispatch energy from the participants every five minutes using the most cost-effective generation to reduce wholesale electricity costs for participants. SPP says the market will provide price transparency and bilateral trades.
The WEIS market has attracted eight participants with the early March addition of Utah’s Deseret Power Electric Cooperative, a regional generation and transmission cooperative with six member retail systems. It is scheduled to launch next February. (See SPP Board OKs $9.5M to Build Western EIS Market.)
