Southwest Power Pool Expansion West Connects Western Utilities to Eastern Markets, Improving Renewable Energy Trading
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The Southwest Power Pool (SPP) is expanding west, which will allow Western utilities like Tri-State to join and sell surplus renewable energy to the East.
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Joining the SPP provides Western utilities benefits like standardized reserve margins and day-ahead pricing to support reliability.
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The SPP bridges the Eastern and Western power grids, enabling power to move between them more easily.
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Tri-State and other Western utilities chose to join the SPP over forming their own RTO because of SPP's strong governance and efficient markets.
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While joining the SPP doesn't fully solve the west-to-east transmission problem, it helps, and utilities will continue advocating for more transmission.