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1 1 (September 8, 2021)

handle is hein.crs/goveelx0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Congressional ~.Research Service informing the Iegislative di bate since 1914___________________ Prospect of a New Western Regional Transmission Organization September 8, 2021 Electric power systems in many western states are under stress with wildfires, persistent drought, and heat waves presenting challenges to reliability, with some seeing climate change as a driver of the West's extreme weather. The growth of population in the region also is increasing demand for electric power, set against the increasing use of renewable sources of electricity and retirements of coal-fired and nuclear power plants in the region. California has set a goal of 60% renewable energy by 2030 in its renewable portfolio standard (RPS). California's is not the only clean energy plan in the region; Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Oregon are among the states with RPS requirements for their retail utilities to obtain renewable electricity. The demand for electricity in California has dominated energy issues in the West for many years, with California utilities reaching out to the Pacific Northwest and neighboring states when needed to import more electricity. But the continuing western drought, combined with recurring region-wide heat waves, have reduced the ability of California's neighbors to provide their excess capacity to the state. Competing RPS requirements have led to regional electricity system inefficiencies in some cases. A lack of transmission capacity, connections, or energy storage has meant that renewable energy sometimes was wasted, as the peak generation from wind and solar power resources does not always match customer demands for electricity. To address these issues, several utilities in the West led by the California Independent System Operator (ISO) established a voluntary Western Energy Imbalance Market (WEIM) in 2014.The WEIM allows participants to buy and sell power close to the time electricity is consumed, and gives system operators real-time visibility across neighboring grids. The result improves balancing supply and demand at a lower cost. An extended Day-Ahead Market that competitively serves the expected power demands of the next day is currently under development for the WEIM. Bonneville Power Administration-a federal power marketing administration (PMA)-plans to join the WEIM in 2022. Parts of another PMA, the Western Area Power Administration (WAPA), joined the WEIM in 2021. The WEIM is not a full regional transmission organization (RTO), which would be established under the regulatory jurisdiction of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). An RTO would have control over daily and long-term functions such as power plant commitment to provide power to the system, system load balancing, transmission planning, and generation resource adequacy-functions that Congressional Research Service https://crsreports. congress.gov IN11743 CRS INSIGHT Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress

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