California Independent System Operator Corporation (California ISO)

Vision

A world-class organization built around a globally recognized and inspired team dedicated to providing cost-effective and reliable service, well-balanced market mechanisms and high-quality information for the benefit of our customers.

Mission

• Operate the grid reliably and efficiently.
• Provide fair and open transmission access.
• Facilitate effective markets and promote infrastructure development through the provision of timely and accurate information.

Core Values

• Integrity
• Teamwork
• Excellence
• People-Focus
• Open Communication

Safeguarding Access, Securing reliability

The California ISO is the impartial link between power plants and the utilities that provide electricity to 30 million consumers, opening access to one of the largest power grids in the world. More than 80 companies are now using the ISO power grid, competing to bring the lowest cost electricity to California customers.

The not-for-profit public benefit company is finding ways to become more efficient. This year it reduced the toll for using the wholesale power grid to the lowest rate ever, from a bundled 85 cents per megawatt-hour in 2005 to 73 cents per megawatt-hour this year.

Keeping the Lights On

Around-the-clock, the ISO Control Room fine-tunes the forecast for electricity demand, scheduling electricity purchased ahead of time to meet that need, and dispatching the least-cost resources in real time to adapt to any last minute fluctuations. Electricity is a commodity that is treated with the utmost care because it assures the health and safety of California's citizens. For that reason, the California ISO conducts markets that will identify and dispatch the most reliable megawatts at the lowest possible cost. It also monitors the markets to ensure a fair and efficient marketplace for both buyers and sellers of electricity. For the fourth year in a row, market monitors have found the California ISO markets stable and competitive. While challenges remain, prices are the lowest since 1998 when normalized for fuel costs.

The ISO also plans for the future of the state's energy needs, identifying improvement that will reduce electricity bottlenecks. In the past year, the costs for managing transmission logjams was sliced nearly in half thanks to grid upgrades approved by the ISO.

Environmental Commitment

The California ISO recognizes that prudent use of electricity is wise in an era when resources are limited. Through the Flex Your Power campaign, the California ISO signals consumers when conservation is critical. Not only does conservation help maintain reliability and minimize environmental impacts, but it also reduces electricity costs during high-demand periods. The ISO is also looking at ways to reduce demand through market mechanisms that will put load reduction on a level playing field with power generation.

Going green is important to California and, therefore, to California ISO—whether it is wind, solar, biomass or geothermal.

The ISO is actively promoting renewable energy sources by helping them gain access to the power grid and its markets. This will help the state reach its Renewable Portfolio Standard that targets increasing environmentally friendly resources to 20 percent by 2010.

Partnering with consumers and the energy industry, the California ISO is prepared to meet the growing electricity needs of the Golden State.

Statistics

• 55,030 megawatts of power plant capacity
• $6 billion in infrastructure investment
• 4.2 million energy market schedules processed per month
• 25,526 circuit-miles of transmission lines
• 30 million people served
• $2.5 billion in annual billings

Yakout Mansour, President & CEO, California ISO