Transmission 2000: Can ISOs Iron Out the Seams?

Experts debate whether merging the four big Northeast grid groups would create a rational market - or just a larger bureaucracy.

At Philadelphia in mid-March, at a workshop run by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to explore the future of electric transmission in the Northeast United States, one executive talked about building what could become the largest, most complex engineering masterpiece in the power industry - or then again, its greatest failure.

Phillip J. Pellegrino, president and chief executive officer at ISO New England, predicted that in the next three to five years, the independent system operators for New England, New York, the PJM Interconnection, and the Canadian province of Ontario would combine to form a super-regional transmission organization in the Northeast. Should that merger occur, the U.S.-based super-RTO region would surpass France to become the largest control area in the world.

Pellegrino believes the merger of the ISOs could help build robust electric commodity markets by creating more consistency in transmission service within the region, while driving down costs by eliminating duplicated functions.