With 16 binding participants and 58 GW worth of load committed, the Western Power Pool’s Western Resource Adequacy Program aims to build on the momentum in 2026 and prepare for more members.
Sixteen participants decided to remain in the WRAP before the Oct. 31 deadline to either exit or commit to the program’s first “binding” — or penalty phase — season in winter 2027/28. (See WRAP Wins Commitments from 16 Entities.)
WRAP now has critical mass and will continue refining the initiative, WRAP Director David Zvareck and WPP Chief Strategy Officer Rebecca Sexton told RTO Insider in an interview.
“We’ve still got two more nonbinding forward showings ahead of us,” Zvareck said. “Those are really the final opportunities for our participants to learn more about the program, get things dialed in and work on curing any deficiencies that they might have had.”
Addressing deficiencies refers to members ensuring they are resource adequate ahead of the first binding season, Sexton noted.
“We’re offering an RA program in the midst of a resource adequacy crisis,” she said. “And in the time it’s taken to get this program off the ground over the last six years, the crisis of resource adequacy has just gotten worse.”
Interconnection requests from large load customers, such as data centers, coupled with supply chain issues make it difficult to keep up and build new generation, Sexton said.
“This makes the program more important but also means that participants have had to work really hard to close the gap so that they can be resource adequate when they go through the first binding season,” she said.
With the WRAP being a requirement to participate in SPP’s Markets+ day-ahead market, Sexton and Zvareck anticipate more entities to join the RA program in 2026.
“The notion of getting a whole group of new participants that could be larger than any we’ve seen so far is a new kind of challenge for us,” Sexton said.
Zvareck and Sexton could not disclose the number of potential new members, but Sexton said there is “a lot of opportunity there to increase the diversity of the footprint … but it certainly could be quite a bit more work to onboard a larger group of folks than we have previously.”
Day-ahead Market Impacts
Most of the 16 participants that committed to the WRAP plan to join Markets+. Meanwhile, five utilities withdrew from the program before the Oct. 31 deadline, including four that plan to participate in CAISO’s Extended Day-Ahead Market (EDAM): NV Energy, PacifiCorp, Portland General Electric and Public Service Company of New Mexico.
Markets+ and EDAM are set to launch in 2026 and 2027, respectively.
Exiting EDAM members cited high deficiency charges, concerns about Markets+ gaining more voting power in the WRAP and challenges operating under a divided Markets+ and EDAM footprint, among other issues. While WPP administers the WRAP, the technical platform is managed by SPP, prompting some participants to question whether EDAM participants can get equal treatment under the program.
Those concerns led some future EDAM participants to launch discussions in April 2025 about developing an alternative RA program for non-CAISO EDAM members, according to a Dec. 18 filing NV Energy submitted to the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada in response to questions about its decision to withdraw from the WRAP. (See NV Energy Filing Reveals Extensive Talks Around EDAM RA Program.)
The West-Wide Governance Pathways Initiative’s Regional Organization for Western Energy has been floated as a potential overseer of an EDAM-aligned RA program. (See Pathways’ ROWE Could Offer Western RA Program, PGE Says.)
Though the WRAP was conceived before the day-ahead markets, Sexton sees opportunities in leveraging them for the program’s purposes. The program’s Day-Ahead Market Task Force is exploring how it can adapt and ensure that both Markets+ and EDAM participants can reap its benefits. (See WRAP Day-Ahead Market Task Force Looks to Future After Commitments, Withdrawals.)
“The thing that’s wonderful about the advancement of the day-ahead market existence — the paradigm that is about to be introduced here — is that they can start leveraging what connectivity does exist in a way that WRAP was never scoped to do,” Sexton said.
For example, the task force is looking into how WRAP can use the day-ahead markets to share the resource diversity between the Northwest and Southwest, Sexton noted.
“It was clearly a priority of the Day-Ahead Market Task Force participants to continue to remain inclusive of a broader footprint and broader participation in WRAP,” Sexton said. “So, it’ll be important to us to be watching how we can not only lean into the Markets+ opportunities presented but also ensure that anyone not in Markets+ can still access the diversity and the benefits of WRAP and be a participant in the WRAP value proposition.”
Seams Issues?
Zvareck said participants in both market camps are eager to collaborate and make the program work.
One concern with having two separate day-ahead markets is the potential for friction at their borders as entities join one market or the other. These seams arise from differing policies and separate dispatch between neighboring markets, which can result in additional costs for transferring energy across the boundary. (See CAISO, SPP Explore Using Existing Tools to Manage DAM Seams.)
The WRAP team will pay “close attention to the seams coordination discussions going on between CAISO and SPP because … there’s an opportunity for that to better inform us how those will work,” Zvareck said. He noted it is still too early to tell exactly how the seams will impact the WRAP.
When asked how much the exits from the WRAP impacted RA efforts and connectivity in the West, Spencer Gray, executive director of the Northwest & Intermountain Power Producers Coalition, said a single RA program would be ideal.
“Over time, harmonization or at least liquidity for RA products with what’s required in California would be even better,” Gray said. “I have hoped that WRAP could provide that, and perhaps it will still evolve in that direction. The region certainly spent a lot of brainpower and effort to launch WRAP, and from NIPPC’s membership, there are competitive retailers both in and out of WRAP.
“But setting aside some of the design challenges of WRAP for many load-serving entities, my overall perception is that while WRAP has predated both the EDAM and Markets+ tariffs and go-live dates, the financial importance in terms of trading volume and the organizational impact of a day-ahead market on participating entities have overwhelmed the value proposition of WRAP for some LSEs,” Gray said. “Some kind of regional RA program and requirement remains highly valuable — to lower the planning reserve margins of individual LSEs and to avoid a dangerous game of musical chairs — but it can take several forms.”
Fred Heutte, senior policy associate at the NW Energy Coalition, said WRAP participants are working to address the concerns of utilities that provided exit notices.
“Those utilities in turn continue to be involved in the WRAP for the next two years, and a lot can happen in that time,” Heutte said.
For Heutte, one of the key RA questions going into 2026 will be how much demand from data centers and other new large loads will materialize. Already, there have been indications of a market correction on some of the higher forecast estimates, he said.
“Transmission facilitates resource adequacy,” Heutte said. “A lot of effort is going into bringing advanced transmission technologies and new power lines onto the grid.”
Heutte pointed to the Western Transmission Expansion Coalition study plan, which is set for public release Feb. 4. The WestTEC effort, jointly facilitated by the WPP and WECC, will address long-term interregional transmission needs across the Western Interconnection. The goal is to produce transmission portfolios for 10- and 20-year planning horizons. (See WestTEC Targets Early 2026 for Release of 10-year Tx Outlook.)
WestTEC is just one example. Efforts are underway in California and Oregon, and Portland General Electric has struck a deal with a data center to bring behind-the-meter batteries to address local RA concerns. The Bonneville Power Administration has launched initiatives to accelerate onboarding of new resources, Heutte noted. (See Utilities Back Some BPA Transmission Updates, Hesitate on Others.)
“And there are many, many other examples throughout the West,” Heutte said.
A recent study by Energy and Environmental Economics predicts that accelerated load growth and aging power plant retirements will create a resource gap starting around 1.3 GW in 2026 and expanding to almost 9 GW by 2030. (See 9-GW Power Gap Looms over Northwest, Co-op Warns.)
Heutte cautioned against interpreting the study as an emergency. He said reports from WECC and the Northwest Power and Conservation Council show the region can meet needs if resource efforts pick up.
“It is important over the next year to focus on the basics and not fall into complacency or panic,” Heutte contended. “And it’s not a matter of reliability versus affordability; both are essential. Everyone wins when the lights stay on and everyone can afford their energy bills. When it comes to resource adequacy in the West, we are surrounded by opportunity, but we have to make the effort now.”
When discussions about launching the WRAP began in 2019, few could have predicted the resource crisis to reach the point it is at now, WPP’s Sexton said.
“I don’t think anyone could have imagined back in 2019 how much harder the resource adequacy problem would have become in the six years since then, or how much commitment we would have to this binding version of a program: more than 58 GW of load and great regional diversity,” Sexton said.
“Our participants are solving that problem,” she added. “They are the ones actually acquiring the resources, making the resource decisions, working on supply chain issues, and then working with us on the metric side and the program side to figure out how to properly stand up the program that they’re committed to.”
