More than two decades ago when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission sought to put large regional wholesale power markets in place nationally, Western states were a hotbed of opposition to the since-abandoned goal. But today there are two competing proposals for competitive day-ahead wholesale power markets as the region has come to recognize that market-based regionalization helps cost-effectively and reliably integrate increasing amounts of variable renewable energy resources.
The Western Power Trading Forum's Scott Miller breaks those down for us, and explains why he's optimistic that the two nascent efforts under way today will one day result in establishing a Western regional transmission organization, or RTO.
"The desire to get to an RTO with the simplicity of a single tariff is something that I think will manifest itself as people get some experience," Miller says. "I'm betting on the fact that once people get some experience in this day-head market, they're going to want to get to the single tariff, with probably some Western twists that are different."
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