Liability Through Markets

There came a point, some years ago, back in the California ISO's control room, where up behind the shift managers position someone put up, in separate letterings, the phrase "Reliability Through Markets."

The CAISO has been in existence for over a decade now. It's purpose was and is to operate the transmission system while facilitating a market based system for the delivery of electricity.

We could endlessly debate the effectiveness of such a system; does it work to support lower costs for ratepayers, does it provide open transmission access to all providers, yadda, yadda, yadda. Some say markets are the best approach, others suggest it's just another layer on top of what the traditional utilities already provided, etc.

I don't really know or frankly care about weather or how it is managing their mandate. What I am really opposed to is the new order of complexity the ISO has foisted upon the system of electric power delivery. Fortunately, I am no longer a part of it, trying to understand it myself and then defending it as necessary. It really is nothing more than a service industry, managing the transfer of a product produced and consumed elsewhere. And massively complex, convoluted, and costly to implement. Power delivery on a physical scale is fairly easy to operate and manage. On a financial scale, it's a beast, and getting worse by the year. Complex systems are prone to failure, IMO.

Working one day in the control room, the "R" in Reliability fell off. All that was needed was for the next letter "e" to fall off to paint the complete picture of what the ISO means to me.