On September 26, Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) released a
Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that they jointly requested last year.
Lieberman and Collins are the Chairman and Ranking Republican,
respectively, of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
Committee.
The study found that, the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission (FERC) has not conducted an empirical analysis or developed
a set of publicly available, standardized measures needed to evaluate the
performance of Regional Transmission Organizations/Independent System Operators
needed to determine whether the benefits they provide outweigh the costs. It recommended that FERC work with RTOs,
stakeholders and experts to develop standardized measures to track the
performance of RTO operations and markets and report the performance results to
Congress and the public. FERC reviewed a
draft of the report, as is customary, and "generally agreed" with the report
and recommendations.
In a press release that day, Sen. Collins said,
"Regional Transmission Organizations like ISO-New England were intended to
improve reliability of electricity service and lower costs, yet since their
inception more than 15 years ago, Mainers have only seen dramatic increases in
their electricity prices. I initiated
this investigation out of concerns that lax oversight by the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission has meant that RTOs have contributed to increased costs
for consumers. GAO's conclusions
confirmed my concerns, and I will work to ensure that FERC quickly implements
this report's recommendations."
The American Public Power Association, in a news
release, stated that it agrees and shares the concerns raised by the GAO and
echoed its call for action by FERC to provide stronger oversight of RTO budgets
and to initiate performance measures.
APPA also highlighted GAO's finding that it has not been demonstrated
that savings from RTO-claimed efficiencies have been passed on to consumers and
called for a study of generator profits.