Perspective

The appropriate role for ITCs is rather different-and maybe not as exciting-as the role ITC proponents seem to have in mind.

This article is a response to what TRANSLink sees as the "four key benefits the hybrid RTO/ITC structure envisioned by TRANSLink provides to electricity customers" in the MISO RTO where TRANSLink proposes to operate. Similar statements of the perceived advantages of ITCs (independent transmission companies) have been made before, particularly by National Grid USA, the ITC that was to be part of the proposed Alliance RTO. Such statements should be examined carefully in light of theory, experience, and FERC's Standard Market Design (SMD), to separate the clear benefits of ITCs from those that are possible-but-unproven, improbable, or even illogical.

TRANSLink CEO Audrey Zibelman's Perspective, published in the July 15, 2002 issue of Public Utilities Fortnightly, discusses the benefits that TRANSLink sees for its ITC, focusing on the unanswered-even unacknowledged-question that leaps from the pages of all ITC proposals so far: Just what will an ITC actually do, and how might it actually do it, in the context of the SMD? The benefits that TRANSLink sees for its ITC proposal are essentially the same benefits claimed by other ITC proponents. It is worth discussing these one by one.