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.

Utility regulators from Oregon and California discussed their proposal for a new independent RTO covering the entire West for the first time publicly.

California Assemblymember Chris Holden said he will hold a bill that could eventually turn CAISO into an RTO while he tries to overcome opposition.

FERC commissioners weighed the pros and cons of Western regionalization, which one commissioner likened to dating, at the CREPC-WIRAB spring meeting in Nevada.

CAISO sent the California Legislature a summary of recent studies of Western regionalization, information intended to aid discussion of the ISO becoming an RTO.

A key California lawmaker introduced a bill to allow CAISO to become a Western RTO by expanding its governance to include representatives from other states.