Grid Operations, Infrastructure and Operations Planning reorganized

Healthy, effective organizations understand the need to adjust as circumstances or their missions evolve over time, which is precisely what we had in mind last November when we briefed ISO staff about plans to reorganize groups within the Grid Operations and Infrastructure and Operations Planning teams.

Now I’d like to take a few minutes to explain these changes, why we made them and what we hope to achieve.

When the original California Independent System Operator’s electricity market was launched in 1998, the ISO served as a single balancing area and managed a market within that same footprint. However, with the growth and success of the Western Energy Imbalance Market (WEIM) and our role as the primary Reliability Coordinator (RC) in the West, our operations team now supports multiple balancing areas across the region. To better serve our WEIM participants and as we prepare to launch our Extended Day-Ahead Market (EDAM) in 2026, we wanted to acknowledge and strengthen the trust we have always strived to engender between the ISO and its customers and demonstrate impartiality in market operations for each and every one of them.

The changes, which went into effect on February 24, primarily have to do with the reporting structure of the Grid Operations and Operations Engineering Services teams and with providing physical and functional separation between market operations activities and balancing area responsibilities.

So, as you can see from the new organizational chart included with this blog, Market Operations now reports directly to me as executive director of grid operations. Under the old structure, Market Operations had been reporting to the CAISO balancing area director and now there is separation. We believe the restructuring makes us more efficient and also reinforces our evolving role as a market service provider while still maintaining high quality and unbiased service in our responsibilities as California’s largest balancing authority

We have also combined Operations Engineering Services and Reliability Coordination, placing them under Raja Thappetaobula, who is now Director RC West Operations. As the power grid and the tools used to monitor it have grown in complexity, the operations engineer and reliability coordinator teams work more closely together. Combining the teams allows us to strengthen the efficiencies and synergies in our processes.

“I like the new structure better and it has better optics with RC West and the (Real-Time Market Operator) not reporting to the balancing area director,” Lee Recchia, grid operations senior manager at Portland General Electric, wrote in an email. Lee added that he had no operational concerns with the prior arrangement “other than optics.”

Chris Hofmann, director of transmission planning and operations for the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, weighed in with: “From SMUD operations perspective, having all the RC operations/engineering under a single director really clarifies things for us and gets us to a single point if we run into any trouble . . .

“I think you end up creating much more clarity moving the RC and grid operations under a separate director and the manager of market operations under you. Just speaking honestly, from an outside perspective, there were always questions about a blurring of the lines between the (market operations) and the RC. This ultimately creates a clear delineation between the two groups.”

And Christopher Sanford, real-time operations director at the Bonneville Power Administration, had this to say: “I like the new organization structure much more than the previous structure.” In particular, he cited how “the RC Operators are no longer directly reporting administratively to the same on-shift manager as the balancing area operators” and that “the market operations manager is no longer reporting to the balancing area director.” The arrangement, he added, “eliminates some of the optical conflicts” he felt had existed under the prior structure “between the market, balancing area, and RC.”

I am pleased our customers are responding as they are. We felt the former structure worked well operationally but knew some customers had concerns about the optics. That’s why we wanted to establish the reporting and physical separation at our Folsom headquarters between market operations and balancing area operations. We think the changes should satisfy our customers’ concerns and reinforce the impartial way we operate. The reorganization not only serves our customers well and makes them more comfortable with how we approach our various roles, it also better positions the California ISO for future success as our regional markets continue to grow and attract additional participants.

Trust and integrity are our primary objectives as we collaborate with customers to ensure impartial, effective and reliable grid operations. We are pleased to report that these changes are reinforcing this commitment.

Responsibilities of the affected teams

Market Operations Coordination:

• Interfaces with Western Energy Imbalance Market entities and provides support to participating balancing authorities 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
• Provides subject matter expert support to market participants on such things as job aids, assisting in development of external training, input for future requirements and enhancements, and testing before implementation of enhancements.

RC West Operations:

• Since November 2019, this unit has been managing reliability coordination services for most of the West.
• Manages Operations Engineering Services for the RC West footprint.
• Oversees grid compliance with federal and regional grid standards, and can determine measures to prevent or mitigate system emergencies in day-ahead or real-time operations.
• Operations Engineers perform outage management and coordination, seasonal studies, day-ahead and real-time market and reliability analyses. They also develop operation procedures and tools to support system and RC West operations.

Balancing Authority Operations:

• Manages real-time balancing of electricity supply and demand across the CAISO Balancing Authority footprint
• Monitors system reliability, dispatching generation, and adjusting energy imports and exports for grid reliability.

Operational Readiness:

• Six business units supporting market and grid operations, including change management activities such as implementing new resources, transmission projects, network model scoping and resource testing and projects impacting control room software and processes.
• Teams do impact analysis through testing, procedures updates, operator training and implementation and they monitor measurement and compliance functions.