Frontlines

The rat must smell the cheese for the power to flow. But utilities still say the market looks "scary."

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission drew a huge crowd in Philadelphia on March 15 and 16 for its Northeast workshop on regional transmission organizations (RTOs) - so large that the mob itself became part of the story.

The room was packed. You could hardly squeeze through the hallway for a coffee without getting your face smooshed up against somebody's name tag. That's when I noticed that most of those tags contained the initials "I-S-O." Now I know where all the laid-off utility executives end up. They leave their jobs as control area operators to do the same thing at the independent system operator.

The ISOs have a great gig. At a time when the state public utility commissions and even the FERC itself are losing clout, the ISOs are creating a new bureaucracy of their own, of staggering proportions. They have seized a whole new turf - the regulation of electric transmission - that once fell into a sort of no man's land. The field was vacant so they just sort of moved in. Some folks want to know: Are the ISOs making progress? Are they asking the right questions? Do the ISOs answer to anyone? For example: