The big challenge facing the Northeast energy markets.
Gary L. Hunt is president at Global Energy Advisors and can be reached at ghunt@globalenergy.com
The Northeast energy markets are working hard to establish new levels of regional coordination and cooperation. The region’s concerted effort is essential to resolving some of the industry’s toughest issues since the individual markets evolved. These issues include the elimination, reduction, or bridging of seams issues that prevent the economic transfer of capacity and energy between neighboring wholesale electricity markets, or control areas, as a result of incompatible market rules or designs.
Seams issues remain one of the greatest barriers to energy trading, market liquidity, resource optimization, inter-regional planning, and overall cost reduction. The Northeast is leading the charge to marginalize intra- and inter-regional seams issues. The Northeast is laying the groundwork for a future where regional goals—such as greenhouse-gas reduction, the economic transfer of capacity and energy, and the benefits of renewable energy—take precedence over individual market designs.
The Northeast region includes the New York ISO, ISO New England, Ontario, Québec, and the Canadian Maritime provinces, which together constitute all of the Northeast Power Coordinating Council (NPCC), as well as the “classic” portion of PJM, which is contained in the Reliability First Corp. (RFC) coordinating council.1,2