The Western energy grid goes by way of a serious transformation as states and utilities try to spice up reliability and fulfill their clear electrical energy objectives. California laws that may have been a primary step towards enhancing grid collaboration within the West didn’t advance final month, however that ought to not cease us from extra actively planning for a sturdy power future at such a essential juncture.
It was encouraging that the governor in Could dedicated to start working in the direction of higher regional cooperation in sharing power and upgrading the transmission community. California management is important to realize a better-connected energy grid that may profit tens of hundreds of thousands of individuals throughout the West.
With out that management, California could possibly be left behind.
In a coverage transient, the Union of Involved Scientists laid out the advantages and dangers of grid regionalization. Establishing a western grid operator may increase entry to renewable power, cut back general prices and assist to keep away from the sort of energy outages we’ve seen previously in periods of utmost warmth.
That was the concept behind Meeting Invoice 538, authored by Assemblymember Chris Holden, a Pasadena Democrat, which stalled within the Legislature final month. It would have allowed California’s grid operator, CAISO, to transition from a politically appointed management into an impartial governance construction – a transfer that may allow it to increase throughout a number of states as a western regional transmission group, often called an RTO.
Whereas the proposal has been floated in California earlier than, the necessity for extra regional collaboration has grow to be extra pressing as local weather change continues to emphasize the grid and we have to construct clear power infrastructure at an unprecedented charge.
It’s essential to acknowledge that CAISO isn’t the one sport on the town anymore. The Southwest Energy Pool, an RTO in Arkansas that operates in 17 central U.S. states, is transferring rapidly to increase its operations into the West. CAISO already collaborates with some western utilities, however these and different utilities are contemplating becoming a member of the Southwest Energy Pool as a result of they wish to be members of an RTO.
If California loses its grid collaborators, power prices will go up and grid reliability could possibly be jeopardized. To stop utilities from flocking to the Southwest Energy Pool, California must make it clear to them that CAISO governance change may nonetheless occur, and continued collaboration may ultimately result in membership in an independently ruled RTO.
One strategy to accomplish that’s for the governor, legislators and regulators to work collectively to form a western RTO that works for California and the remainder of the West. If CAISO is ever going to fill that function, it wants a brand new, impartial governance construction that does a greater job than current grid operators of soliciting significant participation from a broad vary of stakeholders, together with underrepresented communities, and enabling states to pursue their coverage priorities. Happily, a various array of state electrical energy regulators have already supplied a set of governance rules as a jumping-off level.
The additional advantage of shaping that construction now could be that California legislators would seemingly be far more comfy passing a invoice altering CAISO’s governance in the event that they knew what the brand new construction would appear like. On the identical time, California policymakers ought to work to handle considerations over grid regionalization raised by labor teams and the potential impacts on the state’s renewable power objectives.
California ought to ship a transparent sign to the remainder of the West that it’s actively engaged in shaping a western grid operator that may allow states to realize their clear power objectives whereas offering extra dependable and reasonably priced electrical energy to shoppers. The tough work of constructing a western RTO has solely simply begun, and now could be the time for California to proceed charging ahead.
Mark Specht is the Western states power supervisor and a senior analyst for the Local weather & Vitality program on the Union of Involved Scientists.
