Southwest Power Pool dissolving enforcement entity to focus on RTO
Southwest Power Pool (SPP) is eliminating its role as a regional enforcer of grid rules to focus purely as a regional transmission organization involved in reliability coordination, market operations and planning.
Bowing to a nationwide movement among U.S. grid organizations, SPP is dissolving its SPP Regional Entity (RE) by the end of next year. In the meantime, the SPP Regional Transmission Authority (RTO) has expanded its oversight from eight to 14 central and southwest states in the past decade.
“Given that the footprints of the SPP RTO and SPP RE no longer align—due to our significant growth over the last decade and in light of further potential expansion opportunities to the west. . . (the organization’s leadership) made the strategic decision to focus on our core functions of reliability coordination, wholesale market operations and transmission planning. I believe this is in the long-term best interest of SPP and our members,” SPP CEO Nick Brown said in a statement.
The North American Electric Reliability Corp. and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission must approve the termination of the SPP RE. NERC already has given its encouragement for the move.
Once formally approved, all sides must smoothly transition those enforcement duties over 120 electric utilities to another compliance authority.
