New england iso wiki

ISO New England ensures the day-to-day reliable operation of New England's bulk power generation and transmission system, oversees the administration of the region's wholesale electricity markets, and manages comprehensive, regional planning processes. Its board of directors and over employees have no financial interest in any company doing business in the region's wholesale electricity marketplace.

New England's electric power industry, like that of the entire nation, changed dramatically during the past few decades. Until the s, the industry consisted of utilities that handled every aspect of providing electricity: generating it, transmitting it and then distributing it to homes and businesses.

These utilities were regulated local monopolies that operated independently of each other. The Northeast Blackout of marked a turning point for the region's electric power industry. It shut down power for 30 million customers. Concerned about the system's reliability, the Northeast's power companies formed three "power pools" to ensure a dependable supply of electricity. The New England Power Pool NEPOOL , formed in by the region's private and municipal utilities, was intended to foster cooperation and coordination among utilities in the six-state region.

During the next three decades, NEPOOL created a regional power grid that now includes more than separate generating plants and more than 8, miles of transmission lines—all interconnected and dedicated to ensuring that New England never again has a region-wide power failure.

While the electric power industry's regulated monopolies worked well for generations, by the s the lack of competition provided little reason to improve service, minimize prices or invest in new facilities and technologies. In New England, electricity rates were among the nation's highest, and the region had an antiquated electric power infrastructure. In the early s, Congress and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission FERC —which oversees the electricity industry nationally—began enabling the restructuring of wholesale electric power.

They believed competition would provide needed renewal, much as it had in transportation, telecommunications and financial services. The FERC created a level playing field for competitive markets, ensuring equal access to transmission grids and encouraging states to require utilities to sell off power plants and gradually eliminate regulator-set rates in favor of prices determined by the markets.

In , the ISO created a management system for the regional bulk power system and proposed new wholesale markets and ensure access to transmission systems. In , the ISO began managing restructured regional wholesale power markets. In the s and s, growing economic and safety concerns lead to the regulation of the industry. What was once an expensive novelty limited to the most densely populated areas, reliable and economical electric power has become an essential aspect for normal operation of all elements of developed economies.

It is the primary means by which high-voltage transmission lines are reserved for moving wholesale quantities of electricity. As one of the four power marketing administrations within the U. WAPA delivers this power through a more than 17,circuit-mile, high-voltage power transmission system to more than preference power customers across the West. Those customers, in turn, provide retail electric service to more than 40 million consumers.

ERCOT is an American organization that operates Texas's electrical grid, the Texas Interconnection, which supplies power to more than 25 million Texas customers and represents 90 percent of the state's electric load.

A regional transmission organization RTO in the United States is an electric power transmission system operator TSO that coordinates, controls, and monitors a multi-state electric grid. The transfer of electricity between states is considered interstate commerce, and electric grids spanning multiple states are therefore regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission FERC. The purpose of the RTO is to promote economic efficiency, reliability, and non-discriminatory practices while reducing government oversight.

Demand response is a change in the power consumption of an electric utility customer to better match the demand for power with the supply. Until recently electric energy could not be easily stored, so utilities have traditionally matched demand and supply by throttling the production rate of their power plants, taking generating units on or off line, or importing power from other utilities.

There are limits to what can be achieved on the supply side, because some generating units can take a long time to come up to full power, some units may be very expensive to operate, and demand can at times be greater than the capacity of all the available power plants put together. Demand response seeks to adjust the demand for power instead of adjusting the supply. A Transmission System Operator TSO is an entity entrusted with transporting energy in the form of natural gas or electrical power on a national or regional level, using fixed infrastructure.

The term is defined by the European Commission. The Texas Interconnection is an alternating current AC power grid — a wide area synchronous grid — that covers most of the state of Texas. As a regional transmission organization, the nonprofit corporation is mandated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to ensure reliable supplies of power, adequate transmission infrastructure and competitive wholesale electricity prices.

Southwest Power Pool and its diverse group of member companies coordinate the flow of electricity across approximately 60, miles of high-voltage transmission lines spanning 14 states. The company is headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas. MISO also operates one of the world's largest real-time energy markets. The electricity sector of the United States includes a large array of stakeholders that provide services through electricity generation, transmission, distribution and marketing for industrial, commercial, public and residential customers.

It also includes many public institutions that regulate the sector. In , there were 3, electric utilities in the United States, of which fewer than 1, were engaged in power generation.

This leaves a large number of mostly smaller utilities engaged only in power distribution. There were also 65 power marketers. Of all utilities, 2, were publicly owned, were rural electric cooperatives, and were investor-owned utilities. The electricity transmission network is controlled by Independent System Operators or Regional Transmission Organizations, which are not-for-profit organizations that are obliged to provide indiscriminate access to various suppliers in order to promote competition.

The term Smart Grid describes a next-generation electric power system that is classified by the increased use of communication and information technology in the generation, delivery, and consumption of electrical energy. For individual consumers, smart grid technology offers more control over electricity consumption. Typically, the goal is greater overall energy efficiency. It oversees the operation of California's bulk electric power system, transmission lines, and electricity market generated and transmitted by its member utilities.

The primary stated mission of CAISO is to "operate the grid reliably and efficiently, provide fair and open transmission access, promote environmental stewardship, and facilitate effective markets and promote infrastructure development. The electrical power grid that powers Northern America is not a single grid, but is instead divided into multiple wide area synchronous grids. The Eastern Interconnection and the Western Interconnection are the largest.

Each region delivers power at a nominal 60 Hz frequency. The regions are not usually directly connected or synchronized to each other, but there are some HVDC Interconnectors. The Eastern and Western grids are connected with 1. Oversees the operation of New England's bulk electric power system.

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Retrieved ISO New England. Retrieved October 3, Center for Land Use Interpretation. Retrieved 19 January The Boston Globe.