United Power CEO talks about the utility's jump to the Southwest Power Pool

United Power has joined the Southwest Power Pool (SPP), the first distribution utility in the Western Interconnection to make the jump.

President and CEO of United Power Mark Gabriel told NPM that the SPP, a regional transmission organization (RTO), is expected to expand into the Western market in the spring of 2025. The move aligns with the cooperative’s plan to have identified its new power supplier by that time, slated to leave its current wholesale power supplier, Tri-State Generation and Transmission (G&T), in 2024.

“The main thing today is to make sure our staff starts to engage with market and market operations because this is new for us and new for everyone in the West,” Gabriel said.

Critically, he said when United Power looks at its distribution system operator model, it wants to take advantage of FERC 2222, which opens wholesale markets to distributed resources. Gabriel explained that this provides encouragement for distribution utilities to be engaged with the market.

“So right now, it will be a learning experience, to get our people engaged in the process,” he said. “The market will be here in 2025 and we need to understand how to interact and get involved in the process that SPP uses in terms of its utility members.”

In the short term, Gabriel does not see many impacts on projects. But in the longer term, he sees being involved in the market as giving United Power the ability to buy and sell power. Additionally, whoever its power partners become, this will give them access to the SPP market and all transmission involved as well.

In a June 23 press release from United Power, it stated that the value in joining SPP includes reducing cost and risk because the power pool is charged with building reliability and predictability into its power marketplace.

Gabriel said that being a member of SPP also means that United Power has a say in strategic direction of the organization, including where new transmission is built.

Meanwhile, as part of United Power’s separation from Tri-State G&T it issued an All-Source RFP in early May seeking 600 MW. Gabriel said that it received 56 responses expressing interest in being the cooperative’s power suppliers.

“We signed nondisclosure agreements for the next round, which involves them getting engaged with putting together formal proposals by August,” he said.

*This story was originally published exclusively for NPM subscribers last month.


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