The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on June 25 conditionally approved the restructuring of the New England Power Pool into an independent system operator, even though many of the details remain under negotiation.
The FERC also approved on an interim basis the transfer of control of NEPOOL public utility members' transmission facilities to the ISO on July 1 (Docket No. EC97-35-000).
To insure NEPOOL's independence, the FERC changed NEPOOL's definition of "affiliate," a relationship indicating 50-percent ownership, to one indicating 10-percent ownership. A 10-percent affiliate standard is normally used by the FERC. The Commission wrote that the "adjustment is necessary to reduce the potential for affiliates of large investor-owned utilities to block NEPOOL action and to assure more parity in governance issues among participants."