Former SPP COO Carl Monroe's decades of outreach to Western Interconnection entities are evident in the RTO's various markets and service offerings in the West.

The latest version of California’s “Pathways” bill strips out a previous amendment that would have given state regulators authority to order utilities to withdraw from the RO under certain circumstances.

CAISO scored a geographically small but symbolically significant victory with the announcement that two Black Hills Energy subsidiaries will move to the ISO’s Western Energy Imbalance Market.

Participants in the West-Wide Governance Pathways Initiative face a busy meeting schedule this summer as the group’s leaders look to advance on parallel fronts to develop a Western “regional organization.”

SPP CEO Barbara Sugg warned the RTO’s board and stakeholders that the grid operator faces new and stronger headwinds, even as it met its corporate goals’ first-quarter milestones.

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.

Stakeholders have discussed the likelihood that there may be two day-ahead markets in the West, CAISO’s Extended Day-ahead Market and SPP’s Markets+ and/or RTO West.

SPP met a major milestone in its Western efforts as a Markets+ committee approved the day-ahead market’s proposed governing document.

Many at the joint conference focused on the eventual result of the contest between CAISO's Extended Day-Ahead Market and SPP's Markets+ to organize the West's electricity market.