Governors of five New England states have called for big changes in the regional electricity market, as well as the transmission planning process and how the New England power system operator is run.

There are, of course, six New England states. No prizes for guessing which one isn’t participating. New Hampshire likes to be different, which is often good but sometimes not so good. This is not.

The governors say the changes to ISO-New England and NEPOOL are needed to decarbonize the power grid because the current system, built to maximize output and run time for one-way systems fed by a few big power plants, is bad at providing financial incentives and technical support for lots of distributed and renewable (i.e., intermittent) energy sources like rooftop solar and wind farms.

All over the world people are trying to redesign the grid for this reason but since the power grid is, in some sense, the biggest and most complicated machine ever built, making large changes on the fly are very, very difficult. All the more reason for coordinated effort by our elected leaders.

Here’s the statement: http://nescoe.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Electricity_System_Reform_GovStatement_14Oct2020.pdf