The U.S. Southeast’s biggest utilities have filed plans for a Southeast Energy Exchange Market, an electricity trading platform that they say could reduce power prices for about 50 million people and better integrate the region’s growing share of clean power in years to come.
But clean-energy advocates and big corporate energy buyers worry that the plan submitted to North and South Carolina regulators on Friday could divert efforts in both states to explore wider-ranging electricity system planning and integration across the region.
Friday’s announcement from Duke Energy marks the first official step in a plan first revealed this summer. The modern, technology-enabled 15-minute energy trading market being proposed would replace the bilateral electricity trading now conducted by the region’s utilities, including Southern Company, Dominion Energy South Carolina and the Tennessee Valley Authority.
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New Southeast energy exchange adds value
By Nelson PeelerSenior vice president of transmission and fuels strategy and policy
A group of energy companies serving electricity to roughly 50 million people across a wide footprint in the Southeast have come together to propose the creation of a centralized, automated, intra-hour energy exchange. This platform aims to lower costs to customers and optimize renewable energy resources.
SEEM is a 15-minute energy market, the first of its kind for the region, that will use technology and advanced market systems to automatically find low-cost energy to serve customers across a wide geographic area.
If approved, the new Southeast Energy Exchange Market (SEEM) platform will facilitate sub-hourly, bi-lateral trading, allowing participants to buy and sell power close to the time the energy consumed utilizing available unreserved transmission. The exchange is an extension of the existing bi-lateral market.