Six western U.S. states have taken an “extremely important step” toward a more balanced, resilient grid that makes better use of renewable electricity sources, NRDC Switchboard reported Saturday.
By forming an Energy Imbalance Market, the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) and Berkshire-Hathaway-owned PacificCorp will “facilitate rapid trading of the electricity needed to balance out the fluctuations from both renewable power plants and consumer demand,” Zichella writes. The system “allows for the sharing of reserves between participating utilities [and] provides access to complementary renewable resources located far from each other,” in a system that “enables a much more efficient use of the transmission system in the western U.S.”
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The new level of cooperation improves a regional system coordination that “is awkward at best, and threatens reliability at worst,” he explains. “To those who support a clean energy future and the deep renewable energy penetrations needed to make it happen, launching the EIM is a very big deal indeed.”
