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SPP and Member Utilities Successfully Achieve Western Expansion Milestone

LCG, April 2, 2026--Southwest Power Pool (SPP) today announced that the expansion of its service territory into the Western Interconnection has been a success. The milestone makes SPP the first regional transmission organization (RTO) with services spanning the Eastern and Western Interconnections. Its member organizations, which cover all or part of 17 states, can now benefit from a more operationally and geographically diverse integrated system.

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Holtec Achieves Milestone towards Restarting Palisades Nuclear Facility and Advances Plans to Build Two SMRs at Palisades Site

LCG, March 31, 2026--Holtec International yesterday announced that it successfully completed a milestone test necessary to return Holtec's Palisades Nuclear Generating Station to service. The 805-MW pressurized water reactor (PWR) is located in Michigan and was shut down by Entergy in May 2022. Holtec acquired the facility in June 2022 and has pursued a path to return the plant to service.

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Industry News

CA ISO to Implement Damage Control as Electricity Price Caps Expire

LCG, October 29, 2002-The California Independent System Operator (ISO), responsible for transmission reliability in the state, is preparing to apply its new market design when the electricity price cap expires tomorrow.

California's wholesale electricity price cap, currently set at $91.87 per megawatt-hour, was instituted by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in June of 2001 to curb spikes in electricity prices. FERC has neglected to extend the price caps beyond October 30, and the California ISO took this into account when creating its new market design proposal.

The ISO will use a three-test bid evaluation system in order to determine whether or not an offered wholesale price is reasonable. Prices determined to be unreasonably high will be lowered to a rate determined by an "independent third party." Also, California generators will be forced, under FERC's rules, to offer all available capacity to the market if it is needed. Out-of-state suppliers will also be forced to provide available capacity to other control areas in the west as needed.

Bid evaluation will be conducted by the Automatic Mitigation Procedure (AMP), which will determine whether or not a bid is consistent with recent bid history by computer. AMP is only used if the predicted Market Clearing Price is greater than $91.87. If the bid is significantly greater than the projected, unit-specific price and the bid will increase the Market Clearing Price by more than 200 percent or $50, the bid fails and will be lowered to the unit-specific reference price. More detail on the market rules can be found from the ISO's website: www.caiso.com.

Current wholesale electricity prices are well below last summer's and have remained around $30 to $40 per megawatt-hour.

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