CAISO and SPP have made “significant progress” on adapting existing tools to tackle seams between the two entities’ respective day-ahead markets, according to a CAISO representative.

As the Bonneville Power Administration prepares to join Markets+, the agency hopes to complete the initial program governance setup and define its commercial model for market participation in early 2026.

The West-Wide Governance Pathways Initiative could lead the charge on developing an alternative to the Western Resource Adequacy Program that would integrate with CAISO’s Extended Day-Ahead Market, according to co-Chair Pam Sporborg.

FERC granted CAISO's request to remove the sunset date on the Western Energy Imbalance Market Assistance Energy Transfer feature, which has been used by more than 10 of the market’s balancing area authorities in recent years.

A new FERC report adds to the growing body of work showing the complexity of confronting the seams issues likely to arise between the West’s two day-ahead markets when compared with challenges at the borders between RTOs and ISOs in the Eastern U.S.

In an ongoing high-stakes analysis, CAISO has determined that transactions between PacifiCorp’s two balancing authority areas can “materially” affect parallel flows on certain CAISO transmission constraints.

The West-Wide Governance Pathways Initiative’s Launch Committee Co-Chair Pam Sporborg said the stakeholder process of the new regional organization that will oversee CAISO’s energy markets is an evolution of the ISO’s Regional Issues Forum.

A wide variety of stakeholders — including representatives of the DER sector — will serve as advisers to the Pathways Initiative as it enters its next phases.

Western Energy Imbalance Market prices increased sharply in the second quarter of 2025 compared with the same period in 2024, mostly due to higher natural gas prices at Western hubs.