Market Reform was engaged by the ISO/RTO Council (IRC), the umbrella group for the nine US and Canadian electricity system/market operators, to investigate the factors that drive financial investment in generation and other system resource, and how these are influenced by ISO policy/market design decisions and the revenue streams flowing out of the ISO-operated markets. This final report was presented to the IRC’s Annual Board Conference in May 2015. read more →
On August 14, 2003, a cascading failure blacked out significant areas of the US and Canada. This incident was a fundamental failure to maintain system reliability, or “keep the lights on”. With the interim report of the outage task force just released, some already apparent lessons are being re-affirmed. In a heavily interconnected system it is essential to manage reliability on a regional basis – rather than through a large number of disparate, utility-based control areas. Regional Transmission Organisations (RTOs), independent of individual utilities, are the logical entities to provide this management. read more →