By Robert Mullin CAISO stakeholders last week expressed misgivings and confusion about a new issue paper exploring how the ISO can resolve certain generator and transmission contingencies currently handled by out-of-market operations. Questions about the generator contingency and remedial action scheme modeling enhancements paper largely stemmed from uncertainty about the potential...

ERCOT’s Technical Advisory Committee voted last week to dissolve its Distributed Resource Energy Ancillaries Market (DREAM) task force, agreeing the group had brought issues to the forefront that could now be taken up in the ISO’s stakeholder process. The DREAM team was created last May to investigate the regulatory and...

While MISO’s Market Subcommittee (MSC) will not be subject to a name change in light of the creation of the Resource Adequacy Subcommittee (RASC), it will have to revisit parts of its charter and management plan to reflect a division of market responsibilities, MISO’s Steering Committee decided last week. The...

By Michael Brooks FERC is seeking comment on energy storage’s participation in the wholesale energy markets, questioning whether RTOs’ rules are creating barriers for the resource (AD16-20). The commission’s Office of Energy Policy and Innovation last week sent identical letters to each of the grid operators under its jurisdiction, requesting...

By Amanda Durish Cook As MISO contemplates expanding its definition of demand response resources to include medium-term energy storage, some stakeholders are asking the RTO to think more broadly about how storage technologies can participate in its markets. MISO defines medium-term as any storage technology that can sustain output to...

New York’s natural gas demand set a single-day record in February, although the winter was much milder than the average over the past 30 years. The winter operations review presented at the NYISO Management Committee meeting on Wednesday showed that only three relatively brief cold snaps occurred over the winter,...

WILMINGTON, Del. — Mike Kormos, the departing chair of the Markets and Reliability Committee, couldn’t attend his last meeting because of a scheduling conflict, said CEO Andy Ott, who lauded his colleague for his nearly three decades of work at PJM. Kormos © RTO Insider “As he and I grew...

Below is a summary of the issues scheduled to be brought to a vote at the Markets and Reliability and Members committees Thursday. Each item is listed by agenda number, description and projected time of discussion, followed by a summary of the issue and links to prior coverage in RTO...

TransCanada, spurned in its attempts to push through the Keystone XL Pipeline last year, announced it will buy Columbia Pipeline Group for $13 billion, including the assumption of $2.8 billion in debt. The deal will give it access to the Appalachian shale plays. “The acquisition represents a rare opportunity to...

By Michael Brooks WASHINGTON — On-peak day-ahead electricity prices in the U.S. were down 27 to 35% in 2015 compared to 2014 largely because of cheap natural gas, FERC staff said in its State of the Markets presentation Thursday. LMPs in New York hit a 15-year low. Gas prices fell...