WPTF Policy on Resource Adequacy

Any RA program should:

• Maintain reliability across all months and hours.
• Promote competition and customer choice.
• Yield prices that reflect supply and demand fundamentals.
• Minimize transaction and compliance costs.
• Work in concert with energy and ancillary service markets to provide appropriate incentives for investment and operations.
• Encourage sufficiently forward procurement of resources to provide for predictable cost recovery while also allowing for efficient portfolio mangement by load-serving entities.
• Incorporate respective state or local reliability, environmental and procurement policies, consistent with established reliability criteria.
• Not discriminate between LSE owned and market purchased resources.

California's RA program should:

• Clearly delineate the roles of the program administrators and regulators including the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and the California Independent System Operator (CAISO), and any other state and federal agencies, as well as the roles of suppliers and load-serving entities.
  • Methodologies  and rules for assigning RA capacity value to resources and accounting for RA must be consistent among these agencies.
• Be compatible with broader regional approaches to reliability and wholesale markets.
  • A broader regional RA program should evolve as soon as possible.
• Account for the interdependent and changing nature of operations within California and the Western Interconnection, including:
  • Increased penetration of and reliance on availability-limited, duration-limited, and use-limited generation;
  • The retirement of some nuclear and thermal resources; and
  • Balancing Authority Areas' reliance on resources outside of their own BAAs.
• To the extent that it relies on central procurement, utilize clearing-price markets administered by an independent entity.