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'RTO Week' finds FERC still unsure about electric transmission.

If you think the feds have this transmission thing figured out, think again. Listen to Commissioner Bill Massey, as he groped for ideas during "RTO Week," the five-day workshop conducted last month by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to formulate policy for its latest scheme, the "regional transmission organization."

"Are we so underbuilt in transmission," he asked, "that we don't just need a process, but a specific process that guarantees expansion?" J

unior commissioner Nora Mead Brownell could add little else than to suggest more hearings: "Maybe what we need is another working group with state regulators, traders, and consultants to tell us what information we need."

And then there was Commissioner Linda Breathitt, bless her soul, who confessed that, "Up until this week, I had never heard of 'flowgates.'"

Yet Breathitt did contribute one of the more cogent observations of the week:

"FERC has no experience in setting up a process for evaluating transmission projects and putting them in place," said Breathitt, "as [we] have in the area of gas pipelines. So FERC has trouble envisioning how the process should look at an RTO."