Peak Reliability to call it quits in 2019
-Peak Reliability announced on Wednesday it will wind down operations at the end of next year, following about a year of effort to provide reliability coordination (RC) services in the West.
-Peak also announced that it is ending a partnership with PJM Connext, which the pair had formed to explore reliability services and markets in the West.
-The decision to stop providing RC services comes a month after the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) announced plans to begin providing coordination services in the Western Interconnection. The operator said more than two dozen utilities had expressed an interest in signing up.
The shakeup among reliability coordinators got a jolt this week when Peak Reliability, the RC for the majority of the Western Interconnection, announced it would wind down operations at the end of next year.
The coordinator said the decision follows a year of effort by Peak “to provide a viable, long-term RC option for the West.”
Peak said the process to determine next steps for reliability services beyond the end of 2019 resulted in feedback from its funding parties that “clearly indicates overwhelming support for Peak to wind down the organization.”
The Mountain West Transmission Group had planned to join SPP and stop utilizing RC services provided by Peak Reliability, but Xcel Energy balked in April, leaving that plan in limbo. SPP is one of 10 U.S. reliability coordinators in the Eastern Interconnection.
The coordinator also said it would be ending the partnership it announced last year with a subsidiary of PJM Interconnection to possibly provide reliability services and explore markets in the West.
