By Tom Kleckner

SPP’s announcement Tuesday that it will provide reliability coordinator (RC) services in the Western Interconnection should not come as a surprise.

The Arkansas-based RTO has long been interested in expanding into the Western market, where CAISO stands as the only system operator. The integration of Nebraska utilities in 2009 and the Integrated System in 2015 brought the RTO’s footprint alongside the seam between the Western and Eastern Interconnections.

SPP’s bid to add the Mountain West Transmission Group entities to its membership roll, though threatened by Xcel Energy’s decision to withdraw from the effort, would expand the RTO into the Western Interconnection. (See Xcel Leaving Mountain West; SPP Integration at Risk.)

SPP said it intends to serve as an RC in the West by late 2019, leveraging “its expertise and systems to provide reliability and cost savings to Western utilities while lowering costs for its existing members.” The RTO said it has sent letters to the Western Electricity Coordinating Council and NERC expressing that intention and its commitment to working with WECC and Western RCs to ensure reliability.

“We’ve shown consistently throughout our history an ability to coordinate people, systems and complex processes to keep the lights on,” SPP CEO Nick Brown said in a statement, noting the organization has been performing reliability services since its founding in 1941 and was certified as an RC in 1997.

SPP said 28 Western utilities, representing about 200 TWh of net energy for load, have already signed letters of intent expressing interest in its reliability services. If it proceeds with its plans, the RTO will join CAISO and PJM Connext, a joint effort between PJM and Peak Reliability, in offering reliability services in the West. (See Multiple Entities, Markets Now Beckon in West.)

Peak not Surprised

Peak said it was not surprised by SPP’s announcement.

“We are in a competitive market for RC services and the [balancing authorities] and [transmission operators] are quite rightly preserving their options so that they can determine the best fit for their organization,” said Rachel Sherrard, Peak’s vice president of external affairs. SPP’s announcement “is not an indication of decisions made.”

Sherrard said Peak will join SPP and CAISO in soliciting letters of intent from entities interested in taking their RC service from it. “Our process aligns with a recent request by WECC to the BAs and TOPs in the Western Interconnection to provide WECC with confirmation of which RC they will be using by Sept. 4, 2018,” she said.

Plenty of Room

Asked whether there’s room for another RC in the West, SPP pointed out that it is one of 10 RCs in the Eastern Interconnection, where it has a “proven history of working with neighboring RCs.”

“We are confident our experience, tools and processes can contribute to enhancing reliability in the West,” SPP spokesman Dustin Smith said in an email. “As we’ve done with RCs in the East, we are committed to working with Peak and CAISO to establish tools and data exchanges that ensure wide area visibility between RCs.”

Smith said the announcement doesn’t mean SPP’s integration of the Mountain West entities is over.

“SPP continues to discuss potential RTO membership opportunities with [Mountain West], and we expect those discussions to continue as we work to develop our RC services offering parallel to that,” he said.