CRA’s regulatory support consultants were retained by a utility client to perform a cost-benefit analysis for regional transmission organization (RTO) participation. RTO selection has several costs and benefits to ratepayers including reliability, resource adequacy & resiliency, affordability, equity, and environmental impact to name a few.
CRA’s Energy regulatory consultants performed capacity expansion modeling of different RTO participation scenarios to forecast production and capacity costs. Planning reserve margin and ELCC assessments were also used to evaluate reliability and resiliency. Other considerations included transmission, administrative, regulatory, and entry/exit costs, as well as more qualitative measures.
These costs and benefits were studied in aggregate to provide an overall recommendation on RTO participation that best fit our client’s and stakeholder’s needs.
