Aired Jul 14, 2026 · 33 min

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As electricity demand grows and the grid becomes more complex, utilities are looking for smarter ways to deliver reliable, affordable power.

In this episode of Power Perspectives, Kinsey Grant Baker sits down with Mike Wilding, Vice President of Energy Supply Management at PacifiCorp, to explore the Extended Day Ahead Market (EDAM) and how it could reshape electricity markets across the western United States.

Mike explains how EDAM builds on the success of the Western Energy Imbalance Market by enabling utilities to optimize power generation and transmission a full day in advance rather than only in real time. The conversation covers how better forecasting and regional coordination can lower costs for customers, improve reliability during extreme weather, and make more efficient use of renewable energy resources.

Mike also shares the years of collaboration, technology upgrades, and regulatory work required to launch EDAM, along with lessons for utilities considering similar market models. If you're interested in the future of grid operations, regional electricity markets, and utility innovation, this episode offers an accessible look at one of the industry's most significant developments.

Mike Wilding: What EIM did was open up that trading and that transfer capability intra-hour. What if we move that optimization even a step forward in the day ahead?

Kinsey Grant Baker: Why that jump in timing makes such a big difference for the utilities all working to be part of this?

Mike Wilding: We're using the leftover transmission. So any transmission that's not scheduled when you get to that hour or is not being used is turned over to the market. And that creates the ability to transfer between the balancing areas.

Kinsey Grant Baker: How something like EDAM might change the way that PacifiCorp plans and schedules resources specifically.

Mike Wilding: We're seeing good price signals, good price formation. We're seeing transmission used the way we would expect it to be used. Transfers flow the way that we would expect. I'm a firm believer in organized markets and the benefits they bring.

Kinsey Grant Baker: Can day-ahead markets help balance the power equation and make things simpler for everyone involved? Today, we're digging into that very question. I'm Kinsey Grant Baker, and welcome back to Power Perspectives.

You've probably heard about PacifiCorp, the major Western utility that serves customers across a 141,500 square mile territory with 17,500 miles of transmission lines across 10 states. You've probably also heard about the Western Energy Imbalance Market, a real-time wholesale energy market that's grown to 22 balancing authorities across 11 Western states, representing 80% of electricity demand in the Western Interconnection. But have you heard about the Extended Day-Ahead Market built out from the Western Energy Imbalance Market? It's designed to optimize resources for next-day demand across an even broader footprint. But can it work?

Mike Wilding, PacifiCorp's VP of Energy Supply Management, is part of the team bringing this new day-ahead market to life. I want to better understand what purpose day-ahead markets serve in modernizing resource allocation, improving utility planning, and carving out the future of energy. And Mike is the person to ask. So Mike, welcome to Power Perspectives. How are you today?

Mike Wilding: Yeah, I'm doing great. Thanks for having me.

Kinsey Grant Baker: Of course. I'm thrilled to have this conversation. This is a really interesting topic. I think it blends a lot of the cool technical aspects of energy markets with the realities of the challenges of trying to plan ahead. So we're going to dig into a lot today. We're going to have a lot of fun. Before we do that, I just have one question. When we say the Extended Day-Ahead Market, is the acronym EDAM. Do we call it EDAM, Adam? What's the verbiage of choice here?

Mike Wilding: Yeah, we call it EDAM.

Kinsey Grant Baker: Okay. So not like the cheese, but like EDAM. Got it.

Mike Wilding: Yeah, exactly. In fact, I've had people tell me, hey, I like EDAM cheese too.

Kinsey Grant Baker: Yeah, it's a good one. It's a top choice in my household. Okay, awesome. So EDAM is what we will call it moving forward. And I want to start here with another little set here of some basics.

Before we get into EDAM, tell me a little bit more about the Western Energy Imbalance Market. You know, I want to understand what it entails and maybe what some of the biggest learnings were from building out this sort of V1 that eventually gave way and sort of opened up the lane for EDAM. Tell me some of the basics about Western Energy Imbalance and what it has meant to PacifiCorp.

Mike Wilding: What it's meant to PacifiCorp is greater reliability for our customers and significant cost savings. We were the first market participants in the Western Energy Imbalance Market, or WEIM. We like to say we were there even before the W. So we were there when we just called it EIM. And it was just us and the California ISO.

Everyone had to balance their own system going into the hour, and all trading, all transfers had to be done at 20 minutes before the hour. And everything was done, you know, all trading was done by phone, picking up the phone, trying to find a counterparty. What EIM did was open up that trading and that transfer capability intra-hour on a five-minute basis and a 15-minute basis, kind of using any unused transmission or unscheduled transmission for that hour to find any changes, any imbalances in the system that could be balanced.

So to date, just kind of being constrained by what can move on that five-minute and 15-minute basis and being constrained by the unused, what's just the unused transmission, EIM has produced over $8.5 billion of benefits for customers throughout the West through those 22 balancing areas that you talked about opening up the podcast, and PacifiCorp's share of that since 2014 is $1.2 billion. The big thing is all of that goes back to our customers and our cost-based rates. So that's not for our shareholders. That's not increase in profits. That's a full pass-through, full flow-through to our customers.

Kinsey Grant Baker: Yeah. And I think this element of cost savings is something that I really expect we'll talk a lot more about when we're exploring what the future of these day-ahead markets looks like. Before we get into that, though, can you walk me through a little bit how this EIM might have laid the groundwork for EDAM, for the Extended Day-Ahead Market? This EDAM launched in May, sort of building on the Western Energy Imbalance Market, but going day ahead, larger swath of territory here. Tell me a little bit more about the overlap between the two and how maybe one laid the context for the next to come to fruition.

Mike Wilding: Kind of very similar to pre-2014 when each individual balancing area or utility, kind of how to optimize their own system within the hour. Now we've opened that up within the hour in EIM, but everyone comes to the hour balanced and with their own resource plan, their own schedules, having traded bilaterally in the day ahead and in the forward markets to kind of optimize their own system. And you create what's called a base schedule in EIM. And that base schedule is really what does exactly what it sounds like. It creates that base schedule from which the EIM is able to optimize in that five minutes and 15 minutes.

And again, you're constrained by, think about what a gas plant can move in that five and 15 minutes, either ramping up or ramping down. So if California has excess solar that they want to export, you know, and PacifiCorp wants to import that excess solar from California, we've got to move down our own resources off of our base schedule so that we can receive that energy. When you think about that concept and kind of all the benefits that we've been able to provide in that intra-hour optimization, the idea really was, well, wait a second. What if we move that optimization even a step forward into the day ahead? So instead of all of us planning on our own, bringing a base schedule to the market and kind of re-optimizing around the edges based on those base schedules, what if we did that with a common schedule that we co-optimized together in the day ahead?

And so that's really how EDAM was born, is thinking about, OK, so now instead of, you know, California has excess solar, PacifiCorp is going to import that into our system instead of just being constrained by what can move on that five-minute and 15-minute basis and having to come up with our own base schedule. Now we co-optimize that in the day ahead. We come up with better schedules. And now in the imbalance market, we're just capturing those imbalances, those changes in the forecast. But it just opens up the optimization to a much larger scale than what we're able to do within the hour.

Kinsey Grant Baker: So what in the sort of simplest terms is the biggest benefit of moving this from just the intra-hour to 24 hours ahead of schedule here? Can you tell me a little bit more about why that jump in timing makes such a big difference for the utilities all working to be part of this?

Mike Wilding: Yeah, there's a couple of things, just greater economic benefits. And so in EIM, what I mentioned is, for kind of lack of a better term, we're using the leftover transmission. So any transmission that's not scheduled when you get to that hour or is not being used is turned over to the market, and that creates the ability to transfer between the balancing areas. But now EDAM provides a way to kind of proactively make transmission available to the market, to the organized market. We are able to provide visibility into all the load that needs to be served, all the generation that's able to serve that load, bid that generation in, bid that load into the market and capture those economic benefits for the customers by moving that forward.

So now instead of being constrained by what can move in that five or 15-minute market, using the example of importing excess energy from California, now we can plan for that excess energy on a day-ahead basis. And perhaps instead of ramping a natural gas plant down, perhaps not even turning that natural gas plant on and bringing that excess energy, or and just running the entire generation fleet for the entire footprint, our footprint, California's footprint, future participants' footprint much more effectively.

Kinsey Grant Baker: Yeah, I think there's an interesting element of this cost savings, this economic benefit part of the conversation that I'm curious to hear your perspective on. Obviously, affordability is a huge topic of conversation for any utility listener. It's also a huge topic of conversation for any utility customer who has a bill to pay at the end of the month, right? When we're looking at something like this, that, you know, at least in theory, and it seems in practice too, is something that can provide cost savings that are passed on to your customers. How do you translate that story of increasing affordability in something that might be a little complicated for the average consumer, the average customer to understand? How do you translate that to them? You know, how do you think about this sort of new model in a way that makes sense for customers and that might change their own perceptions or perspectives on affordability?

Mike Wilding: That's a really hard question and something that we're really trying to get better at and get out and tell the story at PacifiCorp. When EDAM launched, my whole family knew that I'd been working on this big project for more than five years. When they asked me to explain it to them, I got looks like, that's not how this works already? You know, so when you think through it and you kind of think through the progression of, you know, how we operated before, how we operate now in EDAM, it's just kind of logical and kind of makes sense.

That is a hard story to tell kind of the everyday consumer and how that impacts their bills. And then also with how regulatory, you know, works and kind of the lag of rates and new rates. But we're doing things. We're reaching out to customers. We're doing workshops with our regulators. We're trying to do more interviews with everyday press and not trade press, trying to let our customers know how this impacts them and how it lowers rates for them.

Kinsey Grant Baker: Yeah, I mean, I imagine the numbers also, to some extent, can a little bit speak for themselves. I think you said $1.1 billion in customer savings since 2014, which feels significant. But, you know, I ask because a lot of the conversations that we have on Power Perspectives and within the Energy Central community often center around how do we translate this in a way that people can understand. And at the end of the day, the bill is really the biggest form of communication that we have with customers, it seems. But it's interesting to hear the perspective and some of the challenges that might go along with that.

You know, with regard to the sort of other second half of why a balanced market like this might make so much sense, you get into the reliability part of the conversation, which, again, is one of the big three when we're talking about, you know, resilience, reliability and affordability. I'd love to dig in a little bit more to the reliability element of this conversation. Tell me a little bit more about how something like EDAM might change the way that PacifiCorp plans and schedules resources specifically. You know, what is this idea of making better use of available transmission? What does that mean in practice to you guys?

Mike Wilding: So in practice, I think really simply, and again, maybe it's one of those things that's just kind of logical, is moving to a seven-day market is a huge reliability impact. You know, over my time in the industry and my time in my role here, which has been a little over five years, kind of some of the most stressed system conditions have come over weekends and three-day weekends, holiday weekends. And so what I've learned is that the grid can take a lot if it's planned for accordingly or if you know what the conditions are. So the grid is very resilient. It is when you don't plan for those conditions and you're kind of working on the fly when things get most stressed.

So I think about, we've had heat events over the Labor Day weekends. We've had ice storms over Martin Luther King Day weekends, and Fourth of July weekends that have been really hot. And then outages happen, both transmission and generation outages. And the way that we operate, you know, outside of the organized market in the West, is you have a trading week that's a five-day trading week. So on Friday, you're trading with other utilities and setting up your system for, you know, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. And then once you get into the day, you're kind of on your own and you can do some things around the edges, but you're going back to that kind of base schedule concept.

And so if you have big outages or big generation outage, transmission outages, you're on the phone, you're calling people asking them if they have excess. They may or may not have excess. They didn't turn resources on. You didn't turn resources on. And so it just makes it more difficult. So moving to that seven days a week where you're re-optimizing your system and re-optimizing the entire market every single day seems like a really simple thing and a real logical thing to do, but it makes a big impact on reliability.

Kinsey Grant Baker: Yeah. I mean, if you do, what is it? If you fail to plan, you plan to fail is the saying, and I think also a Taylor Swift quote. But, you know, this idea is something that sounds like it makes a lot of sense, but I imagine also requires a lot of cooperation, a lot of coordination among different members of these day-ahead markets as they're being built out. And we're seeing increasingly a lot of interest from a lot of different entities across our grid, across our country in joining these day-ahead markets. A lot of headlines about who's joining what market, what they're doing and why. Tell me a little bit more about some of that coordination, that cooperation that went into building out EDAM. What does that look like? How are utilities coordinating with one another? And what does that sort of cooperation game plan look like to you guys?

Mike Wilding: We're an interconnected grid, obviously. We're all connected to each other, but we all operate our piece of this massive machine that we built. And as long as you're operating your piece of the machine correctly and your neighbor's operating it correctly, it all works. Kind of going back through EDAM, it was one, there was the concept and then there is a stakeholder process to really design the market. And that lasted multiple years with participants from EIM; all the balancing area authorities that operate the grid participated in that. Obviously, the CAISO, the California ISO and the market operator, participate in that.

And then also other stakeholders that either own generation or other load-serving entities or policymakers all participated in this stakeholder process that went through, received board approval from the California ISO, received board approval from the EIM governing body, went to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, received approval there. And then we had to turn that idea and that market policy into actually operationalizing a market. And that was about another two-year process and was a massive lift.

And then when PacifiCorp, when we look at where we're geographically situated in the West, I think we touched about 14 other balancing area authorities in the West. And so we're coordinating with them on how things are going to change. We have over 100 transmission customers. And so, again, coordinating with them, running our own stakeholder process on how things are going to change. And then within our balancing authority area, we have other load-serving entities that are also transmission customers, but they also serve load within PacifiCorp's kind of transmission footprint. And so just a ton of coordination.

I think we spent about a year going through our operational practices, how those are going to change, what we're going to need to do differently as a balancing area moving into a market. We also had to go to FERC for our own tariff changes. And so it was a huge lift. And then once we got into actual implementation, you know, it was a massive IT project is really what we found out, just being able to upgrade system models, all of these operational changes that we had kind of dreamed up in big stakeholder conversations, now getting those to actually work in the real world.

That was about another year and a half, two years. And obviously some of this is overlapping, but designing new systems, designing new models, working with vendors, I think in total, we updated or created 14 new applications. And then connecting those with the market, connecting those internally to different applications. It was a big lift.

Kinsey Grant Baker: I mean, it sounds like it. It sounds like the biggest group project of all time, which I sort of imagine is an inevitable next question: what if somebody doesn't, you know, shoulder their burden? We've all been part of a group project where you feel like you're doing all the work. What if some other of these entities that are all participating in this project, this massive group project, doesn't do their homework or doesn't do their research or doesn't build the bibliography? What happens then if they don't operate their piece correctly? What does that look like?

Mike Wilding: You know, the West, as kind of independent as we are in the individual balancing areas, we have a really good history of working together and solving problems together. I mean, we have the reserve sharing group at the Western Power Pool where we all come together in reliability instances and are able to, you know, lean on each other. And when those kind of emergencies happen, when there's big outages or things like that, that we need a plan or that we plan for, and we plan collectively for. So the incentive to not let that happen is really, really strong. Right. Nobody wants to be the one that didn't operate their part of the machine correctly. So super strong incentive. And then as far as EDAM and markets are concerned, you have that reliability incentive, but also economic incentive to do that.

And then internally, you know, yeah, this hit every part of our business, you know, transmission, our front office and our trading desk, our generation fleet, our finance fleet. And so, yeah, it was a little bit of time, organized chaos, it felt like, and, you know, especially being the first ones. But, you know, ultimately a lot of grit, a lot of sweat equity in this market to get it up and started.

Kinsey Grant Baker: Yeah, absolutely. It sounds like partnership was a huge part of this. And I think increasingly that speaks to the trends that we're seeing across the power industry these days, the importance of partnerships from utility to utility, from region to region, from market to market. All of that matters so much. I'm curious with regard to sort of the big picture beyond just EDAM and the work that you and the team have done over the last five years. When we're looking at the big picture, I want to hear a little bit more about how you think about maybe this balance between local autonomy, the importance of local autonomy, and the importance of that more regional coordination. Do those two, you know, interact with one another? Are they in concert with one another? Are they in tension with one another? Tell me a little bit more about what that looks like.

Mike Wilding: Yeah. And that's a really important question. I mean, especially to, you know, our regulators, and in the West, the reason why, and is really at the heart and the foundation of the reason why we have, you know, 30-something balancing areas in the Western Interconnect, because of that local, you know, control, that independence that's so important to us. This question really kicked off and jumpstarted what we call the Pathways Initiative and really modifying and evolving the governance of the markets. So the California ISO, as you might be aware, that is defined in statute of California, has to be governed by California, and the governor appoints the board of the California ISO. And they are also the market operator and, you know, have operated the day-ahead market for decades within the state of California.

We had gotten really comfortable in EIM with this idea of a governing body over EIM that had kind of joint authority with the California ISO board and the market operator board. Um, but now a lot more running through the market. All of your load, all of your generation, your transmission is running through the market instead of just kind of the incremental changes within the hour. Our commissioners and some of the regulators and policymakers in the western United States got together with this question in mind of, you know, if utilities and balancing areas are really serious about joining EDAM, we need to have a better governance policy in place.

And so they came up with this idea that California would be on equal footing as the rest of us. And so kind of porting that governance out of California, making it regional governance with every state and every kind of balancing area having an equal voice, and treating California kind of the same as everyone else as a market participant, was really huge and actually required a law change in California. So a few of us and a lot of us were involved in that with the passage of Assembly Bill 825 that allowed that to happen.

So I'll say, like, historically, there has been tension there. But that desire and that kind of creative thinking by a lot of smart people in the West and a lot of policymakers in the West has been able to move that forward, to evolve it, to kind of bring those ideas together, kind of realizing that we're going to be better and we're going to be stronger if we do collaborate and we do work together. We do have these day-ahead markets, but we have to have a more independent governance and all the states need to have kind of equal say. So it's been a lot of creative thinking, a lot of evolution in that area.

Kinsey Grant Baker: Yeah. I mean, I imagine it's quite the undertaking to balance all of these different priorities and ideas about the future and strategies about planning ahead. It certainly is not an easy job. I'm certain of that. With regard to other day-ahead markets that are also in the works, we have talked on this show before about SPP and Markets+. I understand their governance structure is a little bit different with that day-ahead market. But effectively, I think it's something like most of the West by 2028, I think is the year, is expected to be participating in either one of these two day-ahead markets. Is there anything that these two have in common? Anything that these two really diverge on? I would love to just hear your thoughts on this as a broader trend, knowing that there are other day-ahead markets that are entering the fray right now.

Mike Wilding: Absolutely. I think kind of at the core of the day-ahead markets is kind of the same concept, right? It's using a locational marginal price to facilitate a nodal dispatch and making transmission proactively available to the market to enhance reliability and lower costs for customers. And, you know, two day-ahead markets, Markets+ and EDAM, both in the West, is going to be better than what we have today and better than, you know, what we had before EDAM, where we're all kind of doing that day-ahead thing on our own. And so I think one of the things that they just have kind of fundamentally in common, kind of the foundational principles in common.

I think the other thing that we have in common is, you know, this is not a full RTO. This is kind of marrying two concepts, a contract path and an OATT world, with an organized market world. And so it's a little weird sometimes, you know, we have to figure out how to make the organized market work with kind of the OATT world. And both EDAM and Markets+ are trying to do that and are doing that. But there are some key differences in the market design. You know, some price formation differences, some congestion allocation differences. And, you know, not that one's better than the other, but there are some differences, but kind of fundamentally trying to accomplish the same thing.

Kinsey Grant Baker: Yeah, I appreciate that context. Is there sort of a one-liner or an elevator pitch of how you would win people over to EDAM?

Mike Wilding: I think it comes down to economics and physics. The transmission connectivity in EDAM is proven through EIM. And the load and resource diversity in the footprint of EDAM, I think we have about 50% of the load and the renewable generation. And so having that connected, diverse footprint is going to drive both reliability and cost savings.

Kinsey Grant Baker: All right. You heard it here first, folks. So, Mike, we are having this conversation about halfway through the summer. I mentioned that EDAM launched May 1st. Now that you are a couple months in, looking to the future, I would love to hear more about how you and the team at PacifiCorp might measure whether this is delivering on what it was designed to deliver. What does success look like for you and how are you measuring that?

Mike Wilding: I mean, we're measuring it right now. I think we're, you know, two months in. It's been successful thus far. It's just us in California and the California ISO. We're getting price signals. We're seeing the transfers follow those economic price signals. So when prices are low in Utah, we're seeing transfers out of Utah to higher-priced areas in the Northwest and in California, and then vice versa as well. And so that was kind of one thing that we saw. And then as the footprint grows, we'll continue to look to see those benefits grow.

I'm really excited to see how things work this summer. It'll be our first, obviously, our first summer going through with the organized market in the day ahead. So, but yeah, so far so good. We're seeing good price signals, good price formation. We're seeing transmission used the way we would expect it to be used, seeing, you know, transfers flow the way that we would expect. So all good things.

Kinsey Grant Baker: Yeah. So what you're thinking about, you know, the rest of the country. Obviously, when we're looking at the balance of opportunity and also challenges, the West is a big one when we're thinking about the national grid here. But I would love to hear a little bit more just about where you see this potentially having promise elsewhere as a system of operating for utilities, for markets themselves. Are there any other parts of the country where you think a day-ahead market would really thrive?

Mike Wilding: I don't know if I have enough expertise to opine on that. I mean, obviously, there's day-ahead markets existing within the RTOs already. And, you know, we learned a lot as we were kind of working through this process, learned a lot from them. And then there's areas of the country that I guess don't have an RTO and don't have a day-ahead market. And so obviously, you know, I'm a firm believer in organized markets and the benefits they bring. So I guess if anyone called me, that would be what I would say.

Kinsey Grant Baker: I like it. I like it. So let's say someone does call you. You know, what's your advice to utilities that are considering joining a day-ahead market based on the experience that you've had? What would be your sort of tips and tricks?

Mike Wilding: Give yourself time to do everything right, to get up to speed, if you're going from not operating within an organized market to operating within an organized market, or going from, uh, you know, even an intra-hour like an EIM to a day ahead. I think my biggest thing is, like, everything matters more now, right? So like I mentioned before, in EIM, everything, you're kind of constrained by what can move in that 5 and 15 minutes, and so you get a lot of things that are masked over by those base schedules, like the things that you did on your own.

So now in the day-ahead market, everything matters more. Like, your wind forecast matters more. Your load forecast matters more from the day ahead. Your solar forecast matters more. The model capabilities of all of your plants and all of your transmission just matter more now because everything's visible to the market. The market's co-optimizing everything. So a lot of benefits, that produces a lot of benefits, but also puts a lot more onus and a lot more responsibility on the market participants.

Kinsey Grant Baker: A lot of that boils down to, that's just kind of a lot of pressure. And the utilities are used to it, right? This is sort of a life-and-death kind of industry. But with regard to trying to manage that pressure, are there any strategies, technologies, pieces of advice that you might offer to utilities that are looking down the pipe at what is, at least in theory, quite a bit of pressure to perform and to make sure that everything is in tip-top shape all the time? What's your thoughts on that?

Mike Wilding: As we got ready for EDAM and even now, not only are we changing kind of the way that we operate, and this has an impact on kind of everything that we're doing. We also are upgrading the tools that we have at our disposal, or have upgraded the tools that we have, doing a better job at capturing data and then turning that data into insights so that we can operate better. We can be just overall better market participants. And so I think that would be the piece of advice I'd have.

Kinsey Grant Baker: All right. Well, Mike, I dig it. I think this is really useful information for utility operators and leaders across the board. It has been so wonderful to get more of the inside scoop on how this all came to be and what it means for the grid of the future, the energy industry of the future. So thank you so much for joining me today and sharing your insights.

Mike Wilding: Yeah, thanks for having me. Really appreciate it.

Kinsey Grant Baker: Of course. And thank you, as always, to all of you for tuning in. This has been another episode of Power Perspectives. I'm Kinsey Grant Baker, and I will see you next time.