FERC approves New England power grid plan

- The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission conditionally approved a plan for New England's transmission grid operator to form an independent entity that controls the region's power flows.

ISO New England currently operates the $4.5 billion wholesale marketplace for more than 14 million people in Massachusetts, Maine, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and Rhode Island.

The FERC action formally designates ISO New England as a regional transmission organization (RTOs), which the agency has endorsed as a way to pool available supplies to improve reliability and lower costs for consumers. The agency has already approved RTOs in the Midwest and the Northeast.

The New England grid has been operating since 1997 in a less formal arrangement in which utilities pool their power into a common network, but still retain control of their transmission wires.

With the status change, the non-profit ISO New England will control the grid's day-to-day operations and have the authority to reroute flows in order to maintain reliability.

U.S. and Canadian federal investigators have found that a lack of such control by the Midwest's grid controller helped cause last August's massive blackout in the Northeast.

FERC has sought to place control of the U.S. grid in the hands of independent groups that lack profit-driven incentives to favor their own generation when routing power flows.

"We have here what will be a truly independent (regional transmission organization), not dependent on the benevolence of the transmission owners," said FERC Chairman Pat Wood.

The status change will give the grid group "greater independence and authority" over the New England network, said Gordon van Welie, the grid's president and chief executive.

FERC set for hearing a proposed 12.8 percent increase in return on equity that participating utilities would earn as incentive for agreeing to join the regional grid.

The agency wants to offer utilities incentives to divest their generation into regional grids, but has yet to decide on the exact formulas it will use, Wood said.

The biggest transmission owners in New England include subsidiaries of NSTAR Electric and Gas Corp., Northeast Utilities Co. , Energy East Corp. , and National Grid Transco Plc .