Perspective

Wisconsinites don't fear 'Day 2.' But let's get the grid rights right.

While working for the Wisconsin Public Service Commission (PSC), I have grown accustomed to the friendly advice frequently offered by regulatory colleagues and utility executives in higher-cost areas to the East. The latest of their suggestions on how to best develop efficient, transparent, robust bulk power markets in the Midwest comes from Scott Miller of the PJM Interconnection LLC (see "Reliability and Markets: Two Sides of the Same Coin," , January 2004), who says critics of the big-bang approach to market development from the Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator Inc. (MISO) are guilty of forcing a "false choice" between reliability and markets.

But the skepticism over MISO's proposal to implement its Day 2 market design-a real-time, day-ahead energy and financial transmission market (a proposal that MISO later agreed to postpone)-across its scattered footprint had very little to do with the false choice suggested by Mr. Miller, and everything to do with potential diminution of the economic value of existing transmission service and future wholesale market activity, especially in load pockets like Wisconsin. These fundamental economic concerns were outlined by stakeholders across the MISO footprint over the glaring omissions in MISO's hastily filed energy markets tariff based on locational marginal pricing (LMP).¹