Utility staff charged with managing real-time operations will be equipped to deal with the seams between two Western day-ahead markets, but the situation will be far from ideal, Western state energy officials heard at the CREPC-WIRAB spring conference.

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.

While some stakeholders are ‘charmed’ by SPP’s market initiative effort, others urge need for deeper tie to CAISO.

SPP and MISO plan to draft a white paper on rate pancaking and unreserved use, two issues that bedevil utilities along the RTOs’ seam.

SPP and MISO plan to apply for grants from the Department of Energy to help fund five transmission projects recently identified in their JTIQ work.

MISO and SPP announced that they plan to ditch their current affected systems study process for more interregional transmission studies like their JTIQ study.

Clean Grid Alliance asked MISO to develop a means to see late-stage projects through its generator interconnection queue when they’re delayed.

SPP stakeholders endorsed the RTO’s latest transmission planning assessment but also withheld approval of a 345-kV, double-circuit project in West Texas.

MISO and SPP's joint targeted interconnection queue study turned up the first transmission projects that could help generation interconnect near the seams.