The Extended Day-Ahead Market Goes Live: EDF’s Michael Colvin
Building on past VX coverage of Western grid integration and governance reform, including the Pathways Initiative and California’s legislative efforts to enable a regional market, we reconnected with Michael Colvin, Director of the California Energy Program at Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), to assess where things stand today and what comes next. In conversation, Colvin outlines the launch of the Extended Day-Ahead Market for Western Energy, the role of independent governance in enabling multi-state participation, and the broader infrastructure challenges shaping the energy transition.
From transmission and permitting reform to emerging resources like offshore wind, geothermal, and hydrogen, he emphasizes that governance, not technology, remains the defining factor in whether a truly integrated Western market can take hold.
Michael, it’s great to reconnect and to give you the opportunity to update VX News readers on the Western grid—long a priority of yours—that is now coming to fruition, and why it matters.
Well, David, thanks for having me. It’s really great to connect with you as well.
At the beginning of May, something called the Day-Ahead Market for Western Energy is going to launch. What this means is that generating resources can bid into a market and make a commitment to buy or sell electricity on a day-ahead basis. This is building on a market that we’ve had in operation for the last 10 years, where we do real-time trades. But as you can imagine, we’ve gotten pretty good at knowing when there’s going to be a lot of solar tomorrow. We’ve gotten pretty good at being able to say, “Hey, we’re going to have some extra electricity…does anyone want to buy it?”
Some of the older and dirtier power plants around the West can’t respond to a price signal on a near-term basis, but they can if you give them a day-ahead notice. For us to be able to sell some of the extra renewables that we’ve worked so hard to build, and displace some of the fossil generation that is older, dirtier, and takes more time to respond. This market is going to be a huge win.
It’s going to be a huge win on three metrics.
1. It’s going to help customers save money, because there’s more efficient trading; 2. it’ll reduce emissions across the West;
3. and it’s going to provide better price signals to help us keep the lights on when the grid is stressed.
If we know there’s going to be a heatwave tomorrow, being able to say to other resources, “Hey, we’re going to need you,” really helps—it gives us more options and more flexibility. So this is something we’ve been working on for a while now, and it’s going to be an incredible advancement to help keep the grid affordable, keep the lights on, and reduce emissions.
Can you address how this Western grid enables participating states and utilities to collaborate, especially given how challenging it has been to achieve that level of coordination?
The Legislature last year passed a law that said if certain conditions are met, California will transfer control of the electricity markets away from the Independent System Operator and move operational oversight to a new regional entity, the Regional Organization for Western Energy, or ‘ROW’. The idea is that no one state; California, Arizona, or Nevada, is going to directly control the electricity markets.
Instead, we all work together to optimize how the grid operates.
Through that legislation, California is signaling a willingness to move governance away from the state and into a regional structure, and that really built confidence among other Western states. It essentially said: if California isn’t dictating the rules, but instead participating alongside others, then more states are willing to join.
That legislation: Assembly Bill 825, authored by Assemblymember Petrie-Norris and Senator Becker, helps define how the West can organize around the infrastructure, the technology, and the market systems we’ve already built over the last decade, in a way that everyone is comfortable with. I’ll add one other point: because the West took a long time to figure out governance, other market proposals have emerged. You’ve seen efforts from the Southwest Power Pool, Markets+, RTO West, but those are further behind and, in many cases, more expensive.
What’s launching now, and what will continue to expand as governance transitions to the ROW, is something built by the West, for the West. This is a really important moment for many reasons, but it proves that we can deliver real benefits regarding cost savings, emissions, and improved reliability, all through regional collaboration.
From EDF’s perspective, what’s the real “win” in advancing a Western grid?
So, from EDF’s perspective, we think being able to dispatch more clean resources through a market-based mechanism is going to help us integrate more renewables and drive emissions down faster than any other method in front of us.
And it’s a great way to have this market sort of float on top of all the mandates that Western states have already passed…something like 80% of electricity customers in the West are already under a clean energy mandate. This market helps optimize that and reduce emissions faster and more cost-effectively.
The way I’d describe it, because that can sound abstract, is with an analogy. The real-time market we’ve been operating is kind of like going to 7-Eleven to buy groceries. The goods are there, but the prices are a little high. Now we’re opening up Safeway. We can plan ahead, write down a grocery list, and go to the store tomorrow.
The difference? More foresight, better choices, and improved outcomes. Put simply, that’s what this expanded market enables. We can plan and dispatch cleaner energy in a better time frame.
How much coordination is actually required across California’s regulators to make this work?
So, for the last several months, we’ve been running what we call parallel operations with California utilities to make sure everything is working the way we expect. We’re not just flipping a switch and letting money flow on day one, and we’ve been road-testing the system.
That involved close coordination between the California ISO as the market operator, and the regulators, including the Energy Commission, the Public Utilities Commission, and the Air Resources Board to make sure the greenhouse gas rules align with market operations.
Simultaneously, utilities need to feel supported and comfortable. Given the ISO operates both as the market operator and a balancing authority, as an entity, they've been involved across multiple roles. We’re essentially hitting every rung of the ladder to make sure we’re ready to go.
Michael, zooming out—Is California actually leading on the infrastructure needed for a reliable, scalable energy transition, or are we still stuck behind bottlenecks?
In my mind, to ‘pull off’ the clean energy transition, you need to look at sort of three fields of engagement. The first is building a lot of clean power and making certain that you're getting the clean generating resources that you need. The second is building the transmission infrastructure to help get the power where you need it, when you need it. Then, the third is the market to help optimize the dispatch of those resources.
We are making advancements with the launch of the day-ahead market to help optimize the dispatch. But we also need to continue to push on building the clean generation and the transmission infrastructure.
Presently, California authorized another 6,000 megawatts of clean energy infrastructure earlier this year, and we’re about to approve a new transmission plan that will support several billion dollars of additional investment in clean energy infrastructure.
The last observation I’ll make is that California has been, and needs to continue, investing in new types of clean energy resources. It can’t just be solar and storage, even though we need a lot of both. We also need to invest in other resources to help balance the grid…things like more wind, both out of state and offshore, enhanced geothermal, long-duration energy storage, and other technologies that ensure we’re getting clean power as much as we can, whenever we can.
Year to date, California has hit 100% renewable energy on the grid about 75% of the days. That’s an incredible achievement, but now, the focus of our investments is on making those 100% days last longer, and doing so with greater predictability.
You didn’t mention nuclear, and understandably so, but speak to the role of alternatives to transmission, such as distributed generation. Many outside California have criticized the state’s emphasis on transmission over distributed resources.
So, I’m actually glad you brought up nuclear, and I think both the federal government and the legislature are going to have to make some decisions on the future of Diablo Canyon, and we’ll see what happens there. We’re going to have to do some real scenario planning on what the state grid
looks like with and without that resource, because it is a major resource. Right now, we’re just trying to think that through.
To your question on distributed generation; it’s “let a thousand flowers bloom” because we need as much distributed generation as possible, but it’s not going to obviate the need for more big new transmission projects. I want to see as much of it built as we can, but I don’t want us thinking that we’re not going to have to make the longer-term infrastructure investments when it comes to transmission.
That said, there are really two types of transmission investments we need to make.
First, we have to optimize the capacity of what we already have: double-circuit lines, advanced transmission technologies, grid-enhancing technologies, and really get the biggest bang for the buck out of existing infrastructure.
Then we’re going to have to build new lines, and those come with different timelines, levels of investment, and longer-term planning horizons.
I’d love to follow up, but let’s shift to California’s permitting process, which is often criticized for the costs and delays tied to environmental review. From your perspective, what are the merits of those criticisms?
California has, and will continue to, show that we can build big things. Yes, we also have some of the most stringent environmental protections of any state in the country, so it’s always about getting the balance right: can we permit and site projects in a timely manner?
I will say, last year California adopted new rules for transmission infrastructure through a revision to what they call General Order 131, now updated to 131E. Through those revisions, we were able to shave off a couple million dollars in process costs and more than a year of calendar time purely through process improvements, without changing environmental standards.
So instead of taking six months, maybe it takes five; instead of spending money in one place, we shift it to another; instead of making determinations at one stage, we move them earlier. I think that kind of detailed reform, that’s the model.
Editor’s Note
Supplemental to this interview, EDF’s newly released backgrounder, “Coming soon: The race to create a West-wide power market begins” (April 26, 2026), highlights the launch of a regional power market—a pivotal step toward improving grid reliability, lowering costs, and accelerating clean energy deployment across the West. For clarity and to preserve voice, EDAM is referred to throughout this interview as the “day-ahead market.” 🔗 Coming soon: The race to create a West-wide power market begins
