SAN DIEGO — Utilities should put customer benefits first when deciding on which Western day-ahead electricity market to join, New Mexico Commissioner Gabriel Aguilera said Oct. 22. 

“I think there are also other things that matter — and governance is one of them —but from my perspective, the primary driver is those customer benefits,” Aguilera said during a panel discussion at the fall joint meeting of the Committee on Regional Electric Power Cooperation and Western Interconnection Regional Advisory Body (CREPC-WIRAB).  

“We owe that to customers,” he said. 

Speaking with RTO Insider after the panel, Aguilera said those benefits should be gauged by improvements to “cost and reliability.” 

The New Mexico Public Regulation Commission (PRC) member’s comments come nearly two months after The Brattle Group released a study showing the state’s two major utilities, Public Service Co. of New Mexico (PNM) and El Paso Electric (EPE), would earn greater economic benefits from joining CAISO’s Extended Day-Ahead Market (EDAM) than SPP’s Markets+ even if neighboring Arizona’s three largest utilities — Arizona Public Service, Salt River Project and Tucson Electric — were to join Markets+. (See Brattle New Mexico Study Shows EDAM Benefits Outpacing Markets+.) 

The Brattle study shows, in that scenario, that PNM would reap $20.5 million in projected benefits by participating in EDAM versus $8 million in Markets+, while EPE would earn $19.1 million and $9.1 million, respectively. 

Aguilera answered in the affirmative when asked whether he thought the Brattle study provided the kind of insight needed to measure customer benefits. He acknowledged again the importance of independent governance for an electricity market, but he also expressed confidence in the ability of the West-Wide Governance Pathways Initiative to bring independent oversight to the EDAM and that an immediate solution to the governance issue shouldn’t be necessary for making a market decision. 

Aguilera declined to comment on whether the PRC will have final say over the decisions by New Mexico’s utilities. He also hesitated to provide a timeline for when the commission would release its “guidance document” regarding market decisions, saying only that he’d completed his contribution to that document. 

The PRC’s next open meeting is scheduled for Oct. 31. As of Oct. 22, the posted agenda for that meeting contained no mention of electricity market issues. 

The New Mexico utility decisions became increased objects of speculation in the Western day-ahead market competition after NV Energy in late May announced its intent to join the EDAM, three months after a Brattle study showed the Nevada utility stood to earn more than nine times the benefits in that market compared with Markets+. (See NV Energy Confirms Intent to Join CAISO’s EDAM.)