SPP has hired former Idaho commissioner Kristine Raper as its senior director of state regulatory policy for the West, effective Jan. 20.
Raper will work with state utility regulatory commissioners in the Western Interconnection to advance SPP’s mission as it expands its RTO footprint into the West and also develops its day-ahead Markets+ service offering.
The grid operator said in a Jan. 12 news release that Raper will assist the management team in addressing ongoing state and federal energy issues, initiatives and strategic matters at the state regulatory level.
“Kris brings years of experience providing well-respected leadership on key issues for state regulators and electric industry stakeholders in the West,” SPP General Counsel Paul Suskie said in a statement.
Raper, who will work out of Idaho, first was appointed to the state’s Public Utilities Commission in 2015 and re-appointed in 2021. She left the commission in 2022 to join WECC as vice president of external affairs.
Vijay Satyal, deputy director of clean energy markets and transmission for environmental nonprofit Western Resource Advocates, congratulated Raper for taking on the “uniquely challenging role” and leveraging her “regulatory policy expertise and experience” in coordinating WECC’s West-wide grid reliability.
“As Kris knows well, the West is embarking on an effort for greater West-wide market integration,” Satyal said, name-dropping the West-Wide Governance Pathways Initiative that is setting up an independent organization to oversee CAISO’s Western Energy Imbalance Market and Extended Day-Ahead Market. (See Pathways Takes Key Step Toward Establishing ROWE.)
“WRA looks forward to Kris’ collaboration and SPP support toward grid modernization (reliability and markets integration) in the West,” Satyal added.
Raper has chaired the Western Interconnection Regional Advisory Body, an organization under the Federal Power Act that advises FERC, NERC and WECC on matters related to grid reliability in the West. She also was a member of the WEIM’s Body of State Regulators and served on its Governance Review Committee. (See Joint CAISO-EIM Authority Debated in West.)
She holds a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from Boise State University and a law degree from the University of Idaho College of Law.
