SPP successfully launched its Western real-time balancing market at midnight Sunday, making it the first RTO with power markets in both the Western and Eastern Interconnections.
The RTO has said its Western Energy Imbalance Services (WEIS) market will lower wholesale electricity costs, increase price transparency and mitigate congestion for its participants. The market joins the reliability coordinator services SPP has been offering 12 entities in seven states since 2019; the grid operator will expand its RC function in April. (See SPP Expands its Western RC Footprint.)
“This will be a historic moment for SPP to launch this market … on time, and under budget,” CEO Barbara Sugg told stakeholders last week.
The WEIS market centrally dispatches energy from the region’s participating resources every five minutes. It is contract-based and does not require its participants to be SPP members. However, most of its participants have since indicated they are committed to evaluating becoming RTO members. (See Western Utilities Eye RTO Membership in SPP.)
WEIS market participants include:
- Basin Electric Power Cooperative
- Deseret Power Electric Cooperative
- Municipal Energy Agency of Nebraska
- Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association
- Western Area Power Administration (WAPA)
- Wyoming Municipal Power Agency
WAPA’s agreement includes the firm loads and resources of Pick-Sloan Missouri Basin Program–Eastern Division in the Upper Great Plains Western Area balancing authority footprint, the Loveland Area Projects and Salt Lake City Area Integrated Projects in the Western Area Colorado Missouri balancing authority footprint.
“Our electricity markets have played a big role in lowering costs, integrating renewables and enhancing reliability in the East, and we’re excited to see a new part of the country begin to see similar benefits,” Sugg said in a statement. “I’m hopeful this is just the beginning of valuable partnerships between SPP and western utilities that will help them and the customers they serve meet their financial, reliability and renewable-energy goals.”
SPP has long eyed expansion into the Western Interconnection. It explored a relationship with the Mountain West Transmission Group several years ago, but the effort was scuttled by Xcel Energy’s decision to join CAISO’s Energy Imbalance Market.
The RTO became the Western Interconnection Unscheduled Flow Mitigation Plan’s administrator in 2018 and it has been hired by the Northwest Power Pool to develop its regional resource adequacy program. (See NWPP Program Taking Shape for Q3 Launch.)
