News Digest

 

Transmission & ISOs

RTO West. Six Western utilities—Avista Corp., Montana Power Co., Portland General Electric, Puget Sound Energy, Nevada Power Co., and Sierra Pacific Power Co.— joined to file a plan with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to form an independent for-profit transmission company, known as TransConnect, that would lease transmission lines from the six companies and in turn belong to a planned new regional transmission organization, known as RTO West, which would operate in an eight-state region. .

GridSouth RTO. CP&L Energy, Duke Energy, and SCANA Corp. proposed jointly to form GridSouth Transco LLC, a for-profit investor-owned transmission company independent from the three founding companies that would also purport to qualify as a regional transmission organization, or RTO, in the Southeast United States.

The companies had announced their intent to form GridSouth in July, and had held a series of public meetings in August and September to develop input from stakeholders. But state regulators in the region have not yet implemented retail supply choice for electric customers—which may affect RTO plans.