Who Runs the Grid

"The power company" is several different kinds of organization depending on where you live, and they answer to different people. Before you call anyone about a rate hike or an outage, know which kind you are dealing with. It decides who sets the rates, whose records are public, and which meetings you can attend.

Four kinds of utility

The pattern in that table is worth remembering. Most utilities are small public or co-op systems. Most customers are served by a handful of big investor-owned companies. In Idaho the Public Utilities Commission regulates the investor-owned utilities and says plainly on its site that it does not regulate co-ops or city-run utilities. If your question is about a co-op's rates, the commission is the wrong door. Go to the co-op's board.

Federal power and BPA

Federal power marketing administrations sell electricity from federal dams. In the Northwest the big one is the Bonneville Power Administration. BPA markets power from 31 federal hydroelectric projects, supplies about a third of the electricity generated in the Northwest, and operates about 15,000 miles of high-voltage transmission. It is self-financing: its costs are paid by its power and transmission customers rather than yearly appropriations. By law, public utilities and co-ops get first claim on its federal power, which is why so many small Northwest utilities are BPA customers.

Generation and transmission co-ops

Many small co-ops do not own power plants. They buy wholesale power from a generation and transmission cooperative (a "G&T") owned by the co-ops together, or from BPA. Tri-State Generation and Transmission, which serves co-ops across four Western states, is one example and shows up in the Markets+ list below.

Balancing authorities

Lesson 3 described the second-by-second balancing job. The organization that does it for a given area is the balancing authority. Most are large utilities balancing their own territory plus any smaller utilities inside it. EIA's 2016 tally counted 37 balancing authorities in the Western Interconnection, 36 in the Eastern and one in Texas. The West has the most because it never consolidated into big regional operators the way the East did.

RTOs and ISOs

Across most of the East and Midwest, plus Texas and California, independent nonprofits run the transmission grid and wholesale market for a multi-state region. These are regional transmission organizations or independent system operators. They dispatch every plant in their footprint, often across many utilities, from one central market.

Outside California, the U.S. West has historically had no full RTO. Each utility balanced its own area and traded with neighbors through bilateral deals, often negotiated by phone and contract. That is changing in stages. SPP extended its full RTO into the Western Interconnection on April 1, 2026, the first RTO to span two interconnections. The entities that started the effort include Tri-State, Basin Electric, Colorado Springs Utilities, Platte River Power Authority and three regions of the federal Western Area Power Administration. Their footprint is mostly in the Rocky Mountain states, not the Northwest.

The West's markets, as of October 2026

Western Energy Imbalance Market (WEIM)

Run by CAISO since 2014, the WEIM is a real-time market. Every five minutes it finds the cheapest available generation across all participants to cover the gap between what each utility scheduled and what actually happened. Participants keep control of their own planning and their own balancing. The market's site lists 24 entities that have entered, with Idaho Power among them since 2018, and Imperial Irrigation District planned for 2028.

Extended Day-Ahead Market (EDAM)

EDAM, also run by CAISO, adds day-ahead scheduling on top of the real-time market. It launched on May 1, 2026, with PacifiCorp as the first participant outside California. Portland General Electric told investors it planned to begin participating on October 1, 2026; confirm that it did before you describe it as a participant. Trade press reports more entrants planned for 2027 (Balancing Authority of Northern California, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, Public Service Company of New Mexico, Turlock Irrigation District) and 2028. S&P Global listed Idaho Power among utilities leaning toward EDAM, with NV Energy, but it had not committed to a join date. Check its latest filings.

Markets+

Markets+ is a competing day-ahead and real-time market being built by the Southwest Power Pool (SPP). FERC accepted its tariff in January 2025. SPP's page lists a target go-live of October 2027 and, as of October 2025, 11 entities funding the implementation phase, including BPA, Arizona Public Service, Puget Sound Energy, Salt River Project, Tri-State and Xcel's Colorado utility.

BPA's path is the one Northwest residents will hear most about. BPA issued its policy decision to pursue Markets+ in May 2025. In a March 2026 letter it proposed joining as a balancing authority and market participant with a target date of October 1, 2028, leaving the WEIM around October 2027 and switching reliability coordinators by April 2028. That letter was a proposal open for comment with environmental review still to come, so describe BPA's 2028 date as a target.

The practical effect for residents: the West is splitting into two day-ahead "seams," with PacifiCorp, Portland General and others in EDAM, and BPA and much of the Desert Southwest heading to Markets+. Utilities sitting between them, including Idaho Power, will trade across that seam. How much that costs or saves is a live question in every affected utility's filings.