Independent System Operator-New England celebrated its 20th anniversary last July with a solid record in its energy and capacity markets, turning around a fragmented regional electric system. Can it repeat that performance in the face of new challenges: retiring coal, oil, and nuclear plants; gas deliverability problems; the rise of renewables; and the need for decarbonization?

On July 1, the Independent System Operator-New England (ISO-NE), headquartered in Holyoke, Massachusetts (Figure 1), marked 20 years as a wholesale, competitive market covering Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and most of Maine (Figure 2). When the ISO began operations, competitive wholesale markets were a bold experiment for the 1990s, fostered by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The foundation was FERC’s belief, based in classical economics, that market competition would produce superior results compared to the conventional model of the state-regulated, vertically integrated monopoly electric companies.

1. At the controls. The control room of Independent System Operator-New England’s (ISO-NE’s) headquarters in Holyoke, Massachusetts, is the nerve center for the group’s operations.

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