California ISO's Chief Operating Officer, Mark Rothleder, details a new study finding that an enhanced day-ahead market, or EDAM, encompassing all 38 balancing authorities in the West, would provide billions of dollars in economic savings for consumers. But EDAM is not a Regional Transmission Organization. Utilities would still control their grid systems. The construct lacks the independent grid oversight of an RTO. But Rothleder sees the enhanced market structure as the beginning of an incremental process that may, one day, bring the sprawling interconnect together under an RTO construct. Or maybe not. That would be okay, he says.
But there are active discussions among a range of parties about some form of a regional RTO, he notes. "All these ... different forms of regional opportunities ... are being discussed, and not being pushed by the regulators or the FERC. These conversations are organically happening because the utilities and the regions are seeing the changing system conditions and the need for broader collaboration as a means to enhance reliability, but also unlock, really, the benefits, the economic benefits as the system transitions."
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