The effort to unite the West under one electricity market appears to be resulting in a patchwork quilt.
Bonneville Power Administration issued a draft decision Thursday to join a market that Arkansas-based Southwest Power Pool is organizing — possibly stretching from Colorado to Washington state — rather than a market organized by the California ISO.
Utilities in the West would likely be divided among two markets if BPA, the federal agency operating in the Pacific Northwest that distributes hydropower from the Columbia River Basin, were to join the Southwest Power Pool.
That could make it harder to save consumers money and build on efforts to ship zero-carbon electricity across the region, said Brian Turner, a director for the clean energy group Advanced Energy United.
