Commercial issues of reliability

Technology advances and growing public pressure gave rise to a sequence of legislation and regulatory action to deregulate (or reregulate) the US industry to obtain the benefits of increased competition. The evolution to competitive markets has inevitably increased the complexity of reliability management. The number of bulk power transactions has grown exponentially and they involve wheeling through many more jurisdictions. The practice of isolating reliability practices from commercial practices became increasingly difficult. Commercial practices have impact on reliability and reliability practices have impact on commerce. NERC participants became increasingly aware that traditional policy development ignored important commercial issues. The Commercial Practices Work Group (CPWG) formed as an ad hoc industry group facilitated by NERC but with no formal charter from NERC. The author discusses the work of the CPWG, NERC restructuring, the market interface committee, and transmission service restoration and scheduling.