Public Power Initiative of the West

The Western Market Transparency Initiative is sponsored by the Public Power Initiative of the West (PPIW). The PPIW’s goal is to develop a voluntary coalition of public power agencies dedicated to enhance transmission access and encourage competitive wholesale electric markets for the ultimate benefit of electric consumers in the Western Interconnection.

The PPIW already has completed one of its initiatives and has several others in the pipeline.

The public power perspective

  • Streamlining of transmission access and enhancement of existing bilateral electricity market infrastructure will facilitate more robust wholesale electric competition in the Western Interconnection. This can be accomplished without compromising our status as locally regulated, vertically integrated utilities whose primary purpose is to meet the electric requirements of our native load customers.
  • The individual, existing open access transmission tariffs and existing bilateral energy markets form the best foundation upon which to begin making incremental improvements in transmission access and facilitation of wholesale energy transactions.
  • Generation and transmission facilities that we own, as well as long-term contracts with suppliers and customers that we hold, allow us to fulfill our obligation to serve end-use consumers. Retention of the physical rights to use our transmission capacity, continuation of unaltered, existing contracts, and a robust bilateral energy market will maintain our ability to deliver low cost electricity to our customers.

Completed initiative

An independently operated common Open Access Same-time Information System (OASIS) that includes tools for reselling transmission once bought and a bulletin board for posting energy pricing information has been created. The OASIS:

  • enhances the utilization of existing transmission capacity
  • develops a workable secondary market for transmission capacity, and
  • encourages bilateral energy deals that increase the efficiency and the use of the interconnected transmission network.

Initiatives in progress

Develop a wholesale price index administered and posted by an independent party to facilitate reliable regional price transparency and support bilateral markets. The price index will:

  • support and improve bilateral electricity markets in the West by enhancing credibility and liquidity,
  • incorporate methodology to include both buy and sell transactions as well as counterparty information from most participants in order to support verification processes,
  • provide necessary tool to support accurate valuation of trading positions and promote an expansion of electricity products,
  • reduce the risk of fraudulent manipulation.

Future initiatives

To be developed more fully and implemented if sufficient benefits to retail and wholesale transmission customers can be demonstrated. Individual utilities will have the flexibility to choose the extent to which they participate in future additional features, based on the value of such features for their customers. This will allow the participants to pursue additional goals both separately and collectively.

Future initiatives could:

  • improve coordination of transmission planning, expansion, generator interconnection, and operations.
  • standardize electricity interchange scheduling to minimize seams issues, increase scheduling efficiency and improve energy accounting between control areas.
  • establish procedures for market-oriented, path-based bidding for transmission capacity to improve management of congestion.