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Regional transmission organization (North America)

ISOs and RTOs of North America as of 2024 A regional transmission organization ( RTO ) in the United States is an electric power transmission system operator (TSO) that coordina...

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ISOs and RTOs of North America as of 2024

A regional transmission organization (RTO) in the United States is an electric powertransmission 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).[1] The voluntary creation of RTOs was initiated by FERC in December 1999.[2] The purpose of the RTO is to promote economic efficiency, reliability, and non-discriminatory practices while reducing government oversight.

Definition

A regional transmission organization (RTO) in the United States is an electric powertransmission 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).

An independent system operator (ISO) is similarly an organization formed at the recommendation of FERC. In the areas where an ISO is established, it coordinates, controls, and monitors the operation of the electrical power system, usually within a single US state, but sometimes encompassing multiple states. RTOs typically perform the same functions as ISOs, but cover a larger geographic area.

The two are similar, with an RTO being more clearly defined and born out of the concept of electrical grid reliability. The delineation between an ISO and an RTO is subtle to some and quite specific to others, as the similarities in the table below illustrate:

In short, an ISO operates a region's electricity grid, administers the region's wholesale electricity markets, and provides reliability planning for the region's bulk electricity system. Today's RTOs do the same thing with an added component of greater responsibility for the transmission network, as established by the FERC.

Background

FERC Orders 888 & 889

In April 1996, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued two orders that changed the landscape of how electricity is generated, transmitted, and distributed throughout North America. Prior to these rulings, generated power and the subsequent energy provided to customers by local service providers was owned and controlled by single entities who often owned the entire generation, transmission, and distribution assets. Because these companies controlled the retail delivery of the energy from generation through their own power lines, consumers had little to no choice regarding whose electricity they were buying.

In economic terms, this structure constituted an impediment for new providers who would want to generate power, move energy, or provide retail electricity to individual consumers.

Order No. 888[4] addressed "Promoting Wholesale Competition Through Open Access Non-discriminatory Transmission Services by Public Utilities; Recovery of Stranded Costs by Public Utilities and Transmitting Utilities." and Order No. 889[5] added and amended existing rules "...establishing and governing an Open Access Same-time Information System (OASIS) (formerly real-time information networks) and prescribing standards of conduct."

Pedido n.º 888

La Orden N.° 888 se cita a menudo como la "desregulación" del sector eléctrico. Sin embargo, desregulación no es un término preciso. En realidad, el sector eléctrico sigue regulado, según la región, por una serie de agencias federales, estatales y locales, así como por diversas comisiones públicas. La Orden N.° 888 tiene un alcance considerable. No obstante, en relación con este artículo, definió dos elementos clave:

  1. Un reconocimiento de que pueden existir barreras para los mercados mayoristas competitivos y que esas barreras deben eliminarse.
  2. Permitir a las empresas de servicios públicos recuperar los costos irrecuperables asociados con brindar acceso abierto a la transmisión.

En relación con el punto n.° 1 anterior, la Orden n.° 888 definió el propósito fundamental de una ISO como «…operar los sistemas de transmisión de las empresas de servicios públicos de manera independiente de cualquier interés comercial en la compraventa de energía eléctrica por parte de dichas empresas». [ 7 ] La orden no impuso ni requirió el establecimiento de ISO. En cambio, en un intento por cumplir con la orden de la FERC, grupos de participantes (o «Consorcios de Energía» compuestos por generadores, proveedores de transmisión y empresas de servicios públicos) se asociaron y propusieron a la FERC el derecho a establecer diseños de operaciones de sistemas independientes. [ 7 ]

Mediante negociación, colaboración y desafíos legales, surgieron los primeros ISO, entre ellos California ISO, PJM Interconnection, New York ISO y New England ISO. [ 7 ] Cada uno propuso un diseño de mercado ligeramente diferente según los resultados de su colaboración. Para facilitar la competencia en los mercados mayoristas, la Orden n.° 888 especificó la separación de las operaciones de una empresa de servicios públicos, dividiendo la generación, la transmisión y la distribución.

In addressing #2 above, the original order (and subsequent clarification by the FERC) allows utilities, under certain defined circumstances, to seek extra-contractual recovery of stranded costs. The FERC continues to receive rehearing petitions regarding stranded cost recovery as it has clearly placed the importance on remedying what it terms as "undue discrimination" at the forefront.[7]

Order No. 888 was not met without objection among the public, academics and industry participants. Requests for rehearing and/or clarification were filed by 137 entities after the order's issuance. The majority agreed with the FERC's assertion for the need to harness the benefits of competitive electricity markets.[7]

Order No. 889

Order No. 889 amended rules establishing and governing the Open Access Same-time Information System (OASIS) (formerly real-time information networks) and prescribed standards of conduct for its use and access. Subsequent orders provided clarifications, standards and protocols.[5]

FERC Order 2000

Where as Order No. 888 provided for an entity (an ISO) to facilitate open access, it was not written with the intent to establish one. FERC Order No. 2000 was:

Issued by the FERC on December 29, 1999, Order No. 2000 codified what it means to be an RTO including its minimum characteristics, functions and ratemaking policy. The order also stated its commitment toward open architecture with a stated goal that an RTO "...be designed so that they can evolve over time."[9] The order still, however, does not mandate that a new entity called an RTO be created, nor does it mandate that an entity call itself an RTO to comply with the FERC's order.

Independent system operators (ISOs)

An independent system operator (ISO) is an organization formed at the direction or recommendation of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). In the areas where an ISO is established, it coordinates, controls and monitors the operation of the electrical power system, usually within a single US State, but sometimes encompassing multiple states.

Similar to an RTO, the primary difference is that ISOs either do not meet the minimum requirements specified by FERC to hold the designation of RTO or that the ISO has not petitioned FERC for the status.

Electric utilities that are located within the United States and engage in interstate commerce fall under FERC authority. Not all utilities are members of ISOs. All utilities and ISOs are responsible to meet the compliance of a larger organization called the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), which overlays the entire FERC footprint and includes a Mexican utility and several Canadian utilities. As such, international reciprocity is commonplace, and rules or recommendations introduced by FERC often are voluntarily accepted by NERC members outside of FERC's jurisdiction. Therefore, one Canadian Province is a member of a US-based RTO, while two others function as an Electric System Operator (ESO), an organization essentially equal to a US-based ISO.

Within the United States one ISO, and its participating utilities, does not fall under FERC authority: The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). ERCOT falls under the authority of NERC and operates a reliability function, separate from its market function, in order to comply with NERC requirements.

ISOs act as a marketplace operator in wholesale power, resulting from FERC order No. 888. Most are set up as nonprofitcorporations using governance models approved by FERC and/or regional or local commissions.

US electricity markets as of 2025[11]

As of 2025, there were seven ISOs/RTOs within continental USA and two in Canada:

The New Brunswick System Operator (NBSO) was dissolved when New Brunswick's new Electricity Act went into effect in October 2013.[12]

There are regions of the United States where ISOs do not exist. Consequently, the utilities do not engage in wholesale power markets. The Pacific Northwest, and states east of California and west of the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas and Texas largely do not participate. The majority of Southeastern states do not participate in wholesale markets. While these regions must conform to open access as mandated by FERC, the power exchanges between utilities is mostly facilitated through bilateral contracts and power purchase agreements. FERC distinguishes three such traditional electricity markets:[11]

Regional transmission organizations (RTOs)

An RTO is an organization formed at the approval of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). In the areas where an RTO is established, it coordinates, controls and monitors the operation of the electrical power system, usually within a single US State, but sometimes encompassing multiple states. The official definition for an RTO: "An entity that is independent from all generation and power marketing interests and has exclusive responsibility for grid operations, short-term reliability, and transmission service within a region."[13]

The designation of an RTO is largely one of scope. An organization wanting to achieve RTO status must petition the FERC for approval, and meet 4 minimum characteristics and 8 minimum functions:[9][2]

Characteristics

  1. Independence – an RTO should be independent from its market participants in financial interests, decision-making, and tariff-setting.
  2. Scope and regional configuration – the region for an RTO should be chosen to achieve the necessary regulatory, reliability, operational, and competitive benefits.
  3. Operational authority – an RTO must have the authority to control its transmission facilities (e.g. switching elements in and out of service, monitoring and controlling voltage) and must be the security coordinator for its region.
  4. Short-term reliability – an RTO must ensure the region meets the NERC reliability standards or alert FERC if it does not.

Functions

Source:[9]

  1. Tariff administration and design – in order to ensure non-discriminatory transmission service, an RTO must be the sole provider of transmission service and sole administrator of its own open access tariff.
  2. Congestion management – an RTO must ensure the development and operation of market mechanisms to manage transmission congestion.
  3. Parallel path flow – an RTO must develop and implement procedures to address parallel path flow issues within its region and with other regions.
  4. Ancillary services – an RTO must serve as the supplier of last resort for all ancillary services and determine if the minimum amount of ancillary services have been supplied according to FERC Order No. 888.
  5. OASIS and Total Transmission Capability (TTC) and Available Transmission Capability (ATC) – an RTO must be the single OASIS site administrator for all transmission facilities under its control and independently calculate TTC and ATC.
  6. Market monitoring – an RTO must monitor market behavior and report market power abuses and market design flaws to FERC.
  7. Planning and expansion – an RTO must have ultimate responsibility for both transmission planning and expansion within its region that will enable it to provide efficient, reliable and non-discriminatory service.
  8. Interregional coordination – an RTO must coordinate its activities with other regions.

Only electric utilities that are located within the United States fall under FERC authority, but a larger organization called the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) overlays the entire FERC footprint and also includes a Mexican utility and several Canadian utilities. As such, international reciprocity is commonplace, and rules or recommendations introduced by FERC often are voluntarily accepted by NERC members outside of FERC's jurisdiction. Therefore, one Canadian Province is a member of a U.S.-based RTO, while two others function as an Electric System Operator (ESO), an organization essentially equal to a U.S.-based ISO.

Algunos ISO y RTO también funcionan como mercado mayorista de energía , especialmente desde la reestructuración del mercado eléctrico de finales de la década de 1990. La mayoría están constituidos como corporaciones sin fines de lucro que utilizan modelos de gobernanza desarrollados por la FERC.

Las Órdenes 888 y 889 de la FERC definieron cómo se permitiría a los productores independientes de energía (IPP, por sus siglas en inglés) y a los comercializadores de energía un acceso equitativo a los sistemas de transmisión, y exigieron la implementación del Sistema de Información de Acceso Abierto en Tiempo Real (OASIS, por sus siglas en inglés) para facilitar el manejo justo de las transacciones entre los proveedores de transmisión de energía eléctrica y sus clientes.

En Europa, las organizaciones de transporte (TSO) cruzan fronteras estatales y provinciales, al igual que las organizaciones regionales de transmisión (RTO).

Historia

Las Organizaciones Regionales de Transmisión (ORT) fueron creadas por la Comisión Federal Reguladora de Energía (FERC) para abordar los desafíos asociados con la operación de múltiples compañías de suministro eléctrico independientes interconectadas. La FERC describe este sistema como voluntario. El modelo tradicional de la empresa eléctrica integrada verticalmente, con un sistema de transmisión diseñado para atender a sus propios clientes, funcionó extraordinariamente bien durante décadas. A medida que crecía la dependencia de un suministro eléctrico confiable y la electricidad se transportaba a distancias cada vez mayores, se formaron redes eléctricas y se desarrollaron interconexiones . Las transacciones eran relativamente pocas y generalmente se planificaban con mucha antelación.

En la década de 1990, a medida que los estados y regiones de Estados Unidos establecían una competencia mayorista por la electricidad, grupos de empresas de servicios públicos y sus reguladores federales y estatales comenzaron a formar operadores de transmisión independientes que garantizarían el acceso equitativo a la red eléctrica para empresas no pertenecientes al sector de servicios públicos, mejorarían la fiabilidad del sistema de transmisión y gestionarían los mercados mayoristas de electricidad. Algunos legisladores y académicos predijeron que la industria eléctrica acabaría desregulada . Los operadores de transmisión regionales se concibieron como una forma de gestionar el enorme aumento del número de transacciones que se producen en un entorno competitivo. Alrededor de una docena de estados decidieron desregular, pero algunos dieron marcha atrás tras la crisis eléctrica de California de 2000 y 2001.

Objetivo

Las RTO garantizan tres factores clave para el libre mercado: 1) acceso abierto y servicios no discriminatorios, 2) la fiabilidad continua de un sistema sin parangón en ningún otro lugar, y 3) múltiples cargos de transmisión que no anularán el ahorro para el consumidor final. Los críticos de las RTO argumentan que el mercado mayorista de electricidad , operado a través de ellas, está elevando los precios por encima de lo que ocurriría en una situación verdaderamente competitiva, y que las propias organizaciones añaden una capa innecesaria de burocracia. Si bien la intención original era que las RTO siguieran siendo organizaciones independientes y sin ánimo de lucro, y se les otorgó un control casi autónomo de su área de servicio, los comités principales y la mayoría de los comités participantes están representados casi en su totalidad por empresas de servicios públicos de propiedad privada, lo que ha erosionado el poder de los estados y la autoridad federal. [ 14 ]

El concepto de RTO prevé la separación de la generación y la transmisión, la eliminación de las tarifas planas y fomenta una membresía diversa que incluya a las empresas de energía pública. Una membresía más amplia contribuye al establecimiento de una entidad con el tamaño necesario para funcionar como una RTO.

Siete operadores de red, ya sean operadores de sistemas independientes (ISO) u operadores regionales de transmisión (RTO), coordinan la red eléctrica para garantizar el suministro fiable de dos tercios de la electricidad consumida en Estados Unidos a dos tercios de su población. La mayoría están supervisados ​​por la FERC.

Los ISO y RTO coordinan la generación y la transmisión en amplias regiones geográficas, ajustando la generación a la demanda de forma instantánea para mantener el equilibrio entre la oferta y la demanda de electricidad . Los operadores de la red pronostican la carga y programan la generación para garantizar que haya suficiente generación y energía de respaldo disponible en caso de que aumente la demanda o se produzca una avería en una central eléctrica o una línea de transmisión . También gestionan mercados mayoristas de electricidad que permiten a los participantes comprar y vender electricidad con un día de antelación o en tiempo real . Estos mercados ofrecen a los proveedores de electricidad más opciones para satisfacer las necesidades energéticas de los consumidores al menor coste posible.

Las ISO/RTO proporcionan acceso a la transmisión sin discriminación, lo que facilita la competencia entre los proveedores mayoristas para mejorar el servicio de transmisión y ofrecer precios justos de electricidad. En amplias regiones, programan el uso de las líneas de transmisión, gestionan la interconexión de la nueva generación y supervisan los mercados para garantizar la equidad y la neutralidad para todos los participantes. Prestar estos servicios a nivel regional es más eficiente que prestarlos a menor escala, empresa por empresa.

Today's power industry is far more than a collection of power plants and transmission lines. Maintaining an effective grid requires management of three different but related sets of flows – the flow of energy across the grid; the exchange of information about power flows and the equipment it moves across; and the flow of money between producers, marketers, transmission owners, buyers and others. ISO/RTOs play an essential role in managing and enhancing all three of these flows.

In North America

As of 2023, there were nine ISO/RTOs operating in North America:[15][16]

Non-RTO transmission organizations

Non-RTO transmission organizations include Columbia Grid and Northern Tier Transmission Group.

ColumbiaGrid, a nonprofit corporation, is not a regional transmission organization (RTO) and has no plans to become one, but instead seeks to achieve many of the benefits of an RTO through incremental additions to its functions. ColumbiaGrid was formed after some of its members chose not to continue in efforts to form Grid West, a Northwest evolutionary structure with the ability to add functions and to move toward independent grid management. The ColumbiaGrid members, including the Bonneville Power Administration, several Washington State public utilities and two investor-owned utilities, wanted an organization with more limited functions and no independent ability to change. ColumbiaGrid performs single-utility transmission planning and expansion via an open and transparent process and is also establishing a multi-system OASIS portal.

Los antiguos participantes de Grid West que habían defendido la creación de una eventual Organización Regional de Transmisión (RTO), principalmente empresas de servicios públicos de propiedad privada y representantes estatales de Oregón , Idaho , Montana , Wyoming y Utah , formaron el Northern Tier Transmission Group (NTTG), una iniciativa incipiente abierta a la evolución, pero inicialmente centrada en mejoras económicas y relativamente sencillas para la gestión de la red, incluido el intercambio de diversidad de errores de control de área (ACE), actualmente en marcha; metodologías transparentes para calcular la capacidad de transmisión disponible; y la planificación, según lo exige la Orden 890 de la FERC.

Véase también

Internacional:

General:

Referencias

  1. ↑ "16 US Code § 824" .
  2. 1 2 "Expediente n.° RM99-2-000; Orden n.° 2000" (PDF) . ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA COMISIÓN FEDERAL REGULADORA DE ENERGÍA . 20 de diciembre de 1999. Archivado del original (PDF) el 21 de diciembre de 2016. Consultado el 18 de noviembre de 2016 .
  3. ↑ Sección RTO/ISO, FERC.gov , Actualizado: 20 de agosto de 2009
  4. ↑ "FERC: Órdenes históricas – Orden n.° 888" . www.ferc.gov . Consultado el 14 de mayo de 2017 .
  5. 1 2 "FERC: Órdenes históricas – Gas" . www.ferc.gov . Consultado el 14 de mayo de 2017 .
  6. ↑ "Orden n.º 888, Norma final, FERC.gov" . Consultado el 14 de mayo de 2017 .
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Orden No. 888-A, Reafirmación, FERC.gov" . Consultado el 14 de mayo de 2017 .
  8. ↑ "Orden n.º 889, Norma final, FERC.gov" . Consultado el 14 de mayo de 2017 .
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 "FERC: Industrias – Órdenes importantes" . www.ferc.gov . Consultado el 14 de mayo de 2017 .
  10. ↑ "Orden n.° 2000A, Orden sobre reconsideración, FERC.gov" (PDF) . Consultado el 14 de mayo de 2017 .
  11. 1 2 "Mercados de energía eléctrica" . Comisión Federal Reguladora de Energía . 26 de junio de 2025. Consultado el 29 de junio de 2025 .
  12. ↑ "Proyecto de Ley 39 – Ley de Electricidad" . www.gnb.ca. Consultado el 14 de mayo de 2017 .
  13. ↑ "PJM – Formación" . www.pjm.com . Consultado el 14 de mayo de 2017 .
  14. ↑ Welton, Shelley (1 de febrero de 2021). "Repensando la gobernanza de la red eléctrica para la era del cambio climático" . California Law Review . 109 (1): 209–275 .
  15. ↑ "Organizaciones Regionales de Transmisión (RTO)/Operadores Independientes del Sistema (ISO)" . ferc.gov . Consultado el 8 de abril de 2014 .
  16. ↑ "isorto.org" . isorto.org .
  17. ↑ "Archivos de NYISO" . RTO Insider . Consultado el 5 de abril de 2024 .