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SPP Agrees to End Enforcement Role; Workers to Keep Jobs

2 min read

Southwest Power Pool Inc. is ending its role as a regional enforcer of standards for reliability in the bulk power grid, agreeing to eliminate an independent arm of the organization, the SPP Regional Entity, no later than the end of 2018.

SPP is a regional transmission organization that manages the grid and wholesale energy market in 14 states in the central United States. Since 2007, it has also been one of eight “Regional Entities” given responsibility for grid standards by the North American Electric Reliability Corp., which is responsible for establishing and enforcing mandatory standards of grid reliability nationwide.

On Tuesday, SPP announced that it had reached an agreement with the NERC to authorize CEO Nick Brown to terminate the arrangement, and that the SPP Regional Entity trustees endorsed the decision on Monday.

“Over the last decade, the SPP RTO has expanded its footprint from 8 to 14 states, launched successful real-time and next-day energy markets and become a consolidated balancing authority for its 546,000-square-mile region,” Brown said in a statement. “Given that the footprints of the SPP RTO and SPP RE no longer align,” SPP has “made the strategic decision to focus on our core functions of reliability coordination, wholesale market operations and transmissions planning.”

In 2006, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission made NERC responsible for enforcing standards, and NERC delegated that authority to eight regional entities across the nation. SPP was named one of those eight in 2007.

“Since its inception the SPP RE has existed as an independent and functionally separate division of SPP,” said Derek Wingfield, supervisor of corporate communications. The SPP RE staff reports not to Brown but to RE General Manager Ron Ciesiel, “and he reports not to our board of directors but to a separate group of independent Regional Entity Trustees.”

The agreement will allow SPP to end its oversight of 120 power entities in eight states while SPP continues serving the transmission grid to 95 member companies. “Termination of the delegation agreement removes SPP Inc.’s enforcement authority, essentially doing away with our RE-related responsibilities,” Wingfield added.

SPP was the last organization to operate as both an RTO and an RE, the company said, and has committed to ensuring the continued employment of its regional entity staff, which comprises 24 of the company’s 605 employees. The SPP RE will continue to operate until another entity takes over reliability monitoring.

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