ISO-NE is touting several “enhancements” to its current governance practices in a recent memo to state energy officials, with minor changes intended to appease frustration that has been bubbling among the New England states in recent years.
The memo, published Friday ahead of the annual New England Conference of Public Utilities Commissioners Symposium, lays out what the grid operator calls “targeted governance and communications enhancements.”
“The changes reflect ISO New England’s independent, but collaborative, role and its commitment to the clean energy transition,” the RTO’s Board of Directors wrote in the memo.
The grid operator is planning a public board meeting in Boston for November of this year, focusing on market issues.
The board also promises in the letter that it will continue to try to center consumers and costs in its considerations, pledging to review “existing documents to identify any additional reasonable needs for enhanced public communications with non-technical audiences” and discuss “potential actions to memorialize its current practice and commitment to considering the costs of significant ISO proposals.”
ISO-NE will also explore boosting its public communication by hosting more webinars on recently completed studies and reports, the memo says.
Finally, the memo says ISO-NE will try to boost its communication directly with the states by offering additional meetings. And significantly, it promises that when developing regional proposals regarding state policy, like a potential Forward Clean Energy Market, ISO-NE will “develop and propose designs that provide states with decision-making authority.”
Philip Bartlett, chairman of the Maine Public Utilities Commission, told RTO Insider that he appreciates the grid operator’s willingness to engage.
“It doesn’t go as far as we’ve been asking for,” he said, but several of the changes laid out in the memo are good steps. “We need to institutionalize these changes … and I think that’s going to be a big part of the discussion going forward.”
The New England State Committee on Electricity has asked for other changes, including more public board meetings, a standing board committee on state and consumer responsiveness, and a process for giving the states shared rights under Section 205 of the Federal Power Act when developing certain new regional rules. (See ISO-NE, States Seek to Build on ‘Alignment’ Efforts.)
Vermont Public Service Commissioner June Tierney called the memo a “promising indicator that we can work together effectively to address our regional market design challenges in the coming months.”