Spring Shoulder Calm, Planning Pressures Mount

North American wholesale power markets spent the week in a broadly orderly spring operating posture, with few signs of acute reliability stress across the major organized markets reviewed. In the West, CAISO and the WEIM footprint continued to operate under relatively mild shoulder-season conditions, and the more important developments were institutional rather than operational: EDAM readiness work, market-simulation activity, queue publication, and transmission governance remained the focus. SPP’s newly expanded western footprint continued to settle into routine committee and stakeholder cadence, while Markets+ remained centered on governance, design, and implementation work rather than live market outcomes. In Alberta and Ontario, short-run market conditions were similarly calm, but both AESO and IESO used the week to advance tariff, planning, procurement, and transmission frameworks designed to accelerate demand growth.