SPP said Wednesday it plans to eventually close its Western Energy Imbalance Service (WEIS) after current members join either its expanded RTO West or its Markets+ program, now under development, that will offer a bundle of RTO-like services.

“We don’t intend to have three different offerings in the West,” Kara Fornstrom, SPP director of state regulatory policy and a staff member working on Markets+ design, said in a briefing for the Western Interstate Energy Board.

The webinar gave Western utility regulators the chance to ask questions about the Markets+ program. Fornstrom made her comments while answering a question from Colorado Public Utilities Commission Chair Eric Blank.

“I just realized this a few days ago, that the WEIS market, the energy imbalance market, is at some point in the future going to sunset as entities join the RTO and the Markets+ day-ahead,” Blank said.

“I was just surprised that WEIS is going away,” he added.

Blank asked if Markets+ would also “sunset” or would be a “permanent option.”

Fornstrom said most of the WEIS’s current members “will have moved already to the RTO expansion … before Markets+ launches, so the WEIS will have shrunk before we get to Markets+, and the remaining entities in WEIS that we have today have expressed their interest … to go to Markets+ rather than just the [WEIS’s] real-time service.

The move is “based on [WEIS members’] interest level on adding the [Markets+] day-ahead service,” she said.

Markets+ will be a “long-term durable solution” in the West, Fornstrom said.

Later, Joe Fina, a stakeholder member of the Markets+ design team and assistant general counsel at the Snohomish County Public Utility District, said: “The WEIS will be replaced by Markets+.”

And SPP spokeswoman Meghan Sever said in an email to RTO Insider that it is “SPP’s intention to only provide one market offering in the West in order to provide maximum benefits for Western utilities. Current WEIS participants will have the option to join the RTO or participate in Markets+. Until then, SPP remains fully committed to continue providing Western reliability coordination and operating the WEIS market.”

Toe-to-toe with CAISO

SPP launched the WEIS, a real-time interstate trading market, in January 2021, making it the first RTO with energy markets in both the Eastern and Western interconnections. It intended for the WEIS to compete with CAISO’s larger and well-established Western Energy Imbalance Market (WEIM).

SPP has had some success competing with CAISO. In January, three Colorado utilities that had planned to join the WEIM instead decided to join the WEIS. Public Service Company of Colorado, Platte River Power Authority and Black Hills Colorado Electric followed Colorado Springs Utilities in switching allegiance from CAISO to SPP. (See Colorado Utilities Choose WEIS over WEIM.)

The WEIS, however, has gained fewer members than the WEIM, which was launched in 2014.

CAISO’s imbalance market has attracted 22 current or planned participants, including major utilities such as Arizona Public Service and NV Energy, while the huge Bonneville Power Administration is scheduled to go live next month. The WEIM has produced $1.93 billion in economic benefits for its members in the past eight years and is expected to cross the $2 billion mark with its next quarterly report. (See Western EIM Nears $2B in Total Benefits.)

With the addition of the Colorado utilities, WEIS has 14 current or future members including Deseret Power Electric Cooperative, the Municipal Energy Agency of Nebraska, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, Guzman Energy and the Western Area Power Administration’s Upper Great Plains West and Rocky Mountain regions and its Colorado River Storage Projects.

CAISO has been working to develop an extended day-ahead market (EDAM) as an additional offering to the WEIM, a real-time interstate market that was the first of its kind. CAISO also provides reliability coordination services through its RC West to most of the Western Interconnection.

The ISO, however, is limited by its one-state governance from becoming a Western RTO.

SPP also offers RC services in the West and is administrator for the Western Power Pool’s Western Resource Adequacy Program (WRAP). Once fully implemented, the WRAP will help Western balancing authorities respond to potential generation shortages during critical hours as the region addresses the retirement of thermal resources and its growing reliance on variable renewable resources. (See NWPP Rebrands as Western Power Pool.)

Unlike CAISO, SPP can offer full RTO membership to Western entities. It intends to expand its RTO footprint and develop a Western market system that is fully integrated with its existing market system.

The Markets+ program is aimed at utilities that do not want to join an RTO but need a range of services normally provided by an RTO, including day-ahead and real-time unit commitment and dispatch. SPP says Markets+ will provide easy transmission service across the footprint and set the stage for the reliable integration of renewable energy’s growth.

SPP presented the Markets+ model to interested participants during a virtual meeting in December and plans to hold in-person forums throughout the West. The RTO is gathering information from interested parties, including WRAP participants, as part of an extensive process leading up to the program’s launch. Wednesday’s WIEB briefing on program governance and other matters was part of that process.