The California Independent System Operator serves about 80% of California's electricity demand, including the service areas of the state's three investor-owned utilities. It also operates the Western Energy Imbalance Market, an interstate real-time market covering territory that accounts for 80% of the load in the Western Interconnection.
CAISO is moving forward with a key initiative to resolve how battery storage resources function on the grid as the battery boom continues in the Golden State.
Peak demand in the Western Interconnection hit a record high of 168.2 GW in 2024, reflecting “early effects” of the growth in large loads such as data centers, according to a new WECC report.
Stefan Andrej Shambora, CC BY-2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Western Transmission Expansion Coalition is on track to publish the first phase of its transmission planning study this summer despite some delays in finalizing the models that will underpin the study.
A California bill to implement the West Wide Governance Pathways Initiative’s Step 2 proposal is headed to the floor of the state Senate after being approved by the body’s Appropriations Committee.
CAISO delayed its final decision on how to allocate congestion revenues in its Extended Day-Ahead Market after receiving comments from stakeholders asking for more analysis.
The California Public Utilities Commission has proposed a new framework that would take a “more programmatic approach” to load-serving entities’ resource procurement requirements compared with the agency’s recent practice of issuing procurement orders as needed.
