El Paso Electric, a utility that serves more than 400,000 customers in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas and New Mexico, said Monday it plans to join CAISO’s Western Energy Imbalance Market in 2023.
The move would expand the EIM’s footprint to Texas for the first time. It also ups the competition between CAISO and SPP’s Western Energy Imbalance Service (WEIS), which launched operations Monday. (See related story, SPP Successfully Launches Western Market.)
“The EIM will allow EPE to leverage our interconnection to the electrical grid with neighboring markets to reduce cost and balance our energy generation with the real-time power needs of our customers, as well as integrate greater amounts of renewable energy,” EPE CEO Kelly Tomblin said in a joint statement with CAISO.
Public Service Company of New Mexico, whose territory borders EPE’s to the north, plans to go live in the EIM early this year.
SPP has been trying to attract utilities in more politically conservative states that do not want to get too cozy with liberal California and its 100% clean-energy agenda.
But the EIM’s oversight — its Governing Body members come from other states — and its economic benefits have been attractive to entities across the West, including in more conservative interior states.
In the fourth quarter of 2020, the EIM provided participants with $69 million in benefits, bringing its total savings for members to $1.18 billion since it began in 2014.
The initial eight members of SPP’s WEIS are Basin Electric Power Cooperative, Deseret Power Electric Cooperative, the Municipal Energy Agency of Nebraska, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, the Wyoming Municipal Power Agency, and the Western Area Power Administration’s Upper Great Plains West, Rocky Mountain region and Colorado River Storage Projects.
The EIM’s current members include Arizona Public Service and Arizona’s Salt River Project; Idaho Power Company; NV Energy; and PacifiCorp’s vast service territory in Oregon, Washington, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho and Northern California.
Five entities plan to go live in the EIM in the first half of 2021: PSC, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, NorthWestern Energy, Turlock Irrigation District and the Balancing Authority of Northern California Phase 2. Six more utilities are scheduled to join the EIM in 2022, including Avista and the Bonneville Power Administration, covering most of the Pacific Northwest, and Xcel Energy, which serves much of Colorado.
EPE was the first entity to announce plans to join the EIM in 2023.
A privately held group, Infrastructure Investments Fund (IIF), bought EPE last year for $4.3 billion, after winning approval for the deal from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. EPE owns a nearly 16% stake in the Palo Verde power plant in Arizona, the nation’s largest nuclear generating station. (See IIF Closes El Paso Electric Purchase and FERC OKs El Paso Electric Mitigation.)
Its decision to join the EIM was based on the projected economic benefits and a desire to pursue “a clean, green energy future,” Tomblin said in the statement.
CAISO CEO Elliot Mainzer said he was pleased EPE chose to join the EIM.
“El Paso’s entry … will improve efficiencies for their customers while strengthening and expanding the geographical scope of our market,” Mainzer said. “We look forward to providing them with outstanding customer service as they join the family of Western EIM entities.”