Utility staff charged with managing real-time operations will be equipped to deal with the seams between two Western day-ahead markets, but the situation will be far from ideal, Western state energy officials heard at the CREPC-WIRAB spring conference.

The PJM Markets and Reliability Committee delayed voting on a proposal to establish a multi-scenario long-term transmission planning process to allow stakeholders to see what action FERC may take on regional planning.

Backers of the West-Wide Governance Pathways Initiative say they want to move quickly on first part of their proposed plan to shift CAISO’s governance to an independent entity.

MISO energy prices plunged on record low natural gas prices in March while the RTO managed a comparatively lower, 68-GW average systemwide load.

ERCOT says recent changes to the calculations used to determine ERCOT contingency reserve service have resulted in smaller quantities of the product this year and stalled the need for further modifications.

Reps from two groups that blocked past efforts to “regionalize” CAISO predict success for an upcoming campaign to change California law to allow the ISO to participate in an independent RTO.

The West-Wide Governance Pathways Initiative applied for the money in January in response to a DOE Funding Opportunity Announcement, seeking two tranches of $400,000 each to be disbursed over two years to help support the effort build an independent Western RTO.