RTO Integration

There is potential for considerable cost savings to cooperatives and municipal utilities if they integrated their transmission facilities into a Regional Transmission Organization (RTO). PSE has assisted utilities that own transmission facilities that are not in a defined rate zone to determine the viability of integrating or incorporating their facilities into an RTO. This includes working through issues related to the costs of integration, transmission planning, and NERC reliability requirements.

In PSE’s experience, the implementation steps include the following:

• Gather information to determine the viability of RTO integration
• Perform initial evaluation for RTO integration
• Based on a “go” or “no-go” decision, either move forward to develop an implementation plan, or terminate the effort
• Form a full implementation team, including RTO contacts to move ahead with the full RTO integration