Transmission Operations

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ERCOT welcomed 70% of Lubbock Power & Light’s load to its system over the weekend, a culmination of six years of engineering work and regulatory approvals. The Texas grid operator said the transition was completed without issues at 12:22 p.m. Sunday. Staff worked closely with LP&L and Oncor personnel to...

A Midwest wind energy developer has filed a complaint with FERC over SPP’s practice of allocating network upgrade costs, alleging that an unexpected $66 million increase slapped onto its wind farm is unjust and reasonable (EL21-77). Tenaska Clear Creek, an affiliate of Nebraska-based Tenaska, filed the Section 206 complaint May...

SPP COO Lanny Nickell last week pointed to a lack of gas generation as the primary culprit behind the first-ever load sheds in the grid operator’s 80-year history during February’s Winter Storm Uri. RTO staff is still working to obtain "specifics about the data," Nickell said during a May 20...

FERC last week ushered through three more unexecuted facilities service agreements (FSAs) between MISO, wind developers and transmission owners. The unexecuted FSAs are a continuing protest against a 2018 commission order reinstating MISO transmission owners’ unilateral rights to self-fund network upgrades. Wind developers are leaving FSAs unsigned of late, hoping...

Investor-owned utility representatives told New York state officials Thursday that they largely agree with state suggestions on ways to improve their companies’ methodologies for calculating transmission headroom in the state’s effort to accommodate the coming surge in renewable generation (Case No. 20-E-0197). The utilities outlined their methodology in a November...

SPP staff said last week that they expect normal conditions and no extreme operation situations within the RTO’s balancing authority and reliability coordinator footprints this summer. During a summer preparedness workshop Thursday, staff told stakeholders that their initial analysis indicates transmission constraints and mitigations will be "manageable" in maintaining reliability.

Utility wildfire experts told WECC last week that another expected year of hot, dry weather will increase the danger of major fires in California, Arizona and the Pacific Northwest that could threaten the electric grid during the West’s annual fire season. "If you look at any of the indices across...

PG&E Corp. faces a long list of financial risks that include new criminal charges and wildfire liabilities not included in last year’s bankruptcy settlement, company officials said in an earnings call and a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday. California’s largest utility is counting on the...

In a sign of the growing threat of utility-sparked wildfires in the Pacific Northwest, the Bonneville Power Administration will this summer join the ranks of Western transmission providers adopting a public safety power shutoff (PSPS) plan. The plan will allow BPA to pre-emptively de-energize specific power lines under conditions of...

The controversy over wheel-throughs in CAISO was not so much a rejection of the ISO’s proposal as an example of the types of comprises and efforts needed to make Western regionalization succeed, CAISO CEO Elliot Mainzer told RTO Insider Friday. "I see this as a test of our collective capacity...