Longmont’s electricity provider has joined a power pool in a move that is meant to save consumers money.
The Platte River Power Authority, which provides power to Longmont and nearby cities, along with Xcel Energy-Colorado and Black Hills Colorado Electric joined the South Power Pool’s Western Energy Imbalance Service Market, or WEIS, at the beginning of this month.
WEIS is a real-time balancing market that dispatches the lowest-cost available energy generated and made available by participating power providers to serve the combined demand for electricity across its region. Without the centralized dispatch, participants would either have to serve customers individually using their generation fleets or using hourly energy interchanges.
“Joining the SPP WEIS helps support our environmental stewardship and represents our commitment to financial sustainability for our owner communities and their customers while focusing on Platte River’s vision of improving our region’s quality of life through a more efficient and sustainable energy future,” Platte River General Manager and CEO Jason Frisbie said.
The Platte River Power Authority, Xcel Energy-Colorado and Black Hills Colorado Electric announced their intent to join the WEIS in January 2022. On April 1, following a testing period, their activities in the market became financially binding.
Southwest Power Pool’s 2022 WEIS Benefit Market Report estimated that the WEIS provided $31.7 million in net benefits to its 12 participating western utilities last year, reducing the cost of wholesale electricity by an average of $1.35 per megawatt-hour.
With the addition of these three utilities, the Southwest Power Pool anticipates the benefits of the WEIS will grow significantly. The areas served by the utilities will almost triple the electrical size of the WEIS.
“This report is another confirmation that the Western Interconnection can gain tremendous value from SPP’s services,” SPP Vice President of Markets Antoine Lucas said. “We look forward to continuing to provide value to our WEIS and other contract service participants in 2023.”
According to the Southwest Power Pool, the new utilities have over the course of the first week in the market consistently experienced lower energy costs and new opportunities to export and profit from excess generation that would have gone unused.
“SPP WEIS allows Platte River to reduce costs and balance our energy generation with the real-time power needs of our region, as well as integrate greater amounts of renewable energy,” Frisbie said.
