Recommendation 12: The Relationship between Competitive Power Markets and Grid Reliability

The U.S. – Canada Power System Outage Task Force concluded that restructuring was not a cause of the August 14, 2003 blackout. However, the Task Force did determine that it was appropriate to explore the concerns raised by those who identify restructuring as a contributing factor. To this end, the Task Force Final Report includes Recommendation #12: The U.S. Department of Energy and Natural Resources Canada should commission an independent study of the relationships among industry restructuring, competition in power markets, and grid reliability, and how those relationships should be managed to best serve the public interest.1 The U.S. Department of Energy and Natural Resources Canada have fulfilled the Task Force’s directive by: 1) inviting ten issue papers, prepared independently, by industry leaders and technical experts to delineate and critically assess the potential impacts of competition on reliability and to recommend appropriate next steps to address these impacts and 2) seeking public comment through presentation and discussion of these papers.