LADWP, which serves about 4 million people in Los Angeles and the surrounding area, this week joins an impressive array of utilities lining up to capture some of the tens of millions of dollars in monthly benefits that the EIM is yielding to its participants in eight western states—and their customers.
The EIM is a “real time” market involving eight western states that trades the difference between the day-ahead forecast of power and the actual amount of energy needed to meet demand in each hour. If we need more energy than predicted, the real-time market—the EIM—makes up the difference….
EIM benefits are piling up
The benefits from the growing EIM truly are impressive. According to the most recent CAISO quarterly reporting:
…the western Energy Imbalance Market (EIM) cost benefits in the first quarter of 2017 are $31.1 million, with total benefits of $173.72 million since the real-time market launched in November 2014….
These utilities join current and prospective EIM participants such as the Oregon-based PacifiCorp (launched the EIM with CAISO in 2014), Las Vegas-based NV Energy (joined Dec. 1, 2015), Puget Sound Energy (PSE) of Bellevue, Washington and Arizona Public Service (APS) of Phoenix, Arizona, (both joined on Oct. 1, 2016). EIM is now providing cost savings for consumers in eight western states (OR, WA, CA, NV, AZ, UT, WY and ID).
Cleaner too
Financial benefits are not the only benefits the EIM is providing. Carbon emissions from market participants have declined steadily too. According to ISO estimates carbon dioxide pollution declined by more than 4.3 million metric tons per quarter since the market’s initiation in 2014 and 2017.
Tip of the iceberg
These benefits, while impressive, represent a small fraction of what would be possible if the western balancing areas authorities organized into a single regional entity run by an independent system operator coordinating the daily and real time operations of generators and transmission lines across the West.
If utilities could offer their energy and transmission into the market to meet expected system demand on a “day-ahead” basis instead of just the real-time market under the EIM, experience in other organized regional markets in the East (PJM), Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) and Southwest Power Pool (SPP) has shown that renewable integration challenges are more easily and efficiently addressed in their larger and more coordinated footprints. Cheap renewables are almost always available due to the large geographic area they are drawn from. In a big geographic area, the wind is always blowing somewhere and the sun is often shining in places not obscured by the clouds affecting others. The effect is a blending of the variability (the “on and off” weather impacts on renewable power) of renewable resources that makes operating the grid easier and less costly. The lower integration cost in turn means financial benefits to participants in markets run by independent system operators are greater, and carbon dioxide and other pollution emissions are lower than they would be in a less coordinated grid.
Because the owners of power plants—both renewable and conventional—decide in the day-ahead market which generating facilities will be offered to compete in the market, less efficient power plants are turned on less often because they likely won’t be chosen to operate. The ISO selects resources that run at the lowest costs to meet the expected demand. Less efficient, more polluting resources can’t compete against cleaner and more efficient ones, especially renewable power plants that have the lowest operating cost (fuel, operations and maintenance and regulatory compliance costs) of all generators. Both the environment and energy customers win in this scenario.
The EIM’s success is but a taste of what is possible in a West-wide organized market system operated by a truly independent system operator. As more and more utilities, both public and investor-owned, continue to see the substantial benefits offered by the EIM, the prospect for a regionally focused, independently operated electricity market and grid remains good.