Planning Reforms and Spring Operations

Across North American wholesale power markets, the week of March 21–27, 2026, was characterized more by ongoing efforts in structural reform than by widespread reliability emergencies. In the West, CAISO’s week focused on changes to transmission-planning schedules, EDAM and DAME market simulations and parallel operations, and updates to daily market-watch, renewable, storage, and queue materials. SPP’s week concentrated on its transition into the Consolidated Planning Process after FERC approval and on continuing development of the western markets through Markets+ and related stakeholder forums. In ERCOT and PJM, the main focus was on large-load and interconnection reforms, highlighting the ongoing impact of growth in data-center and other industrial loads on queue management, reliability planning, and market design.