Interstate grid operator Southwest Power Pool has expanded its wholesale energy market, the latest step in a series of nationwide moves aimed at bringing more efficiency to parts of the country rich in renewable energy potential but lacking in the energy trading regimes to make the best use of it.
Monday’s launch of SPP’s Western Energy Imbalance Service Market will bring real-time energy-balancing trading activity to eight utilities and transmission authorities across Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska.
These regions have some of the best wind power resources in the country and are seeing a massive growth of wind farms to take advantage of it. But like other parts of the country with fast-growing renewables, they can struggle to integrate wind power into the bilateral arrangements they've previously relied on to balance generation capacity with electricity demand across their interconnected transmission systems.