Dive Brief:
- Federal regulators have approved a joint petition to dissolve the Southwest Power Pool Regional Entity (SPP RE) and to transfer registered entities within the SPP RE footprint to the Midwest Reliability Organization (MRO) and SERC Reliability Corporation.
- The Southwest Power Pool and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation last year mutually agreed to terminate a delegation agreement between the two organizations, to reflect the organizations' changing geographic footprints.
- NERC created the SPP RE in 2007, designating it as an electric reliability compliance enforcement authority that was an independent and functionally separate division of SPP.
Dive Insight:
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's decision last week aims to “promote effective and efficient administration of bulk-power system reliability,” and it will expand the geographic footprints of both MRO and SERC.
Both organizations have indicated that they expect to be able to integrate the transferred SPP RE entities with limited increases in administrative costs. The transition is expected to take place July 1, after which MRO's new regional footprint will include more than 220 registered entities and all or part of 16 states and two Canadian provinces.
“We are pleased with FERC’s support of NERC’s technical assessment and resulting realignment of regional boundaries, and we appreciate FERC expediting its decision on the matter,” MRO Interim President and CEO Sara Patrick said In a statement.
The decision, Patrick said, will allow MRO to continue to proceed with certain critical path items that are necessary for an organized transfer of registered entities. Officials say the revised regional boundaries will promote regional coordination and reliable operations of the bulk power system.
Southwest Power Pool President and CEO Nick Brown has previously said the decision was made because of significant growth in the last decade, meaning the RTO's footprint and the regional entity's no longer overlap.
