Time to Reinvent ISO New England

The Office of the Consumer Advocate (OCA) filed a petition with federal regulators today seeking massive reforms to the regional grid operator ISO New England.  Specifically, the OCA is asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to require ISO New England to abandon Delaware as its state of incorporation and, instead, reincorporate under the New Hampshire consumer cooperative statute.

“Delaware is great if you’re Joe Biden, and Delaware’s corporate law is great if you are Amazon or Google,” said Consumer Advocate Donald Kreis.  “But for a nonprofit regional transmission organization like ISO New England, responsible for operating our bulk power transmission system as well as our wholesale electricity markets, New Hampshire is the safest of safe havens.”

According to Consumer Advocate Kreis, the right move for ISO New England is not just to change its state of incorporation but to begin operating as a consumer cooperative, fully faithful to the “Statement on the Cooperative Identity” as adopted by the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA).

“Imagine, in particular, ISO New England no longer overseen by an unaccountable board of directors but, rather, run according to the second of the Cooperative Principles – democratic member control,” said Kreis. “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.”

He called on FERC to require ISO New England to switch to a board elected democratically by electric ratepayers from across the region.  According to the Consumer Advocate, such a board should be comprised of 14 members, with each of the region’s six states electing a minimum of two directors.

According to the ICA’s Statement on the Cooperative Identity, “cooperatives are based on the values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity, and solidarity. In the tradition of their founders, cooperative members believe in the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring for others.”

“Running a regional transmission organization according to those values sure beats what we have now,” said Kreis.  Former FERC Chairman Leland Olds, an economist and social reformer with many decades of experience in the energy field, agreed.

“I think this might be the biggest and most public spirited idea to hit the electric industry since Professor James Bonbright of Columbia University first discovered reactive power in the 1970s,” said Olds.  “I hope my former colleagues at FERC take this very seriously.”

Professor Olive Kitteridge of the University of Maine School of Law, an expert in the fields of energy regulation and family law, agreed.  “Consumer Advocate Kreis may have gotten mediocre grades when he was my student back in the 1990s, but his bold and innovative proposal to reform ISO New England deserves to be taken very seriously by federal regulators,” said Kitteridge.

Although not included in the petition filed by the Office of the Consumer Advocate at FERC, Kreis also proposed that ISO New England relocate from Holyoke, Massachusetts to Concord, New Hampshire.  “The Shaw’s Supermarket on Fort Eddy Road is about to close, and it would make a fabulous new headquarters for our regional transmission organization,” said Kreis.  “Plenty of free parking, and the local branch of Planet Fitness is right up the street.  With a little ingenuity, the treadmills and other exercise machines over there could be hard-wired into the grid to power the ISO New England control room with low-cost electricity!”