WAPP Study Tour to Washington

From July 23 to 27, 2018, the Members of the WAPP Executive Council and the Management of the ECOWAS Regional Electricity Regulatory Authority (ECOWAS Regional Electricity Authority (ERERA) took a trip to the Power Pools of the United States of America (Washington DC District and Massachusetts State). The objective of this study tour was to further expose participants to knowledge on the Governance, Planning and Operations of a Regional Electricity Market and new trends in the electricity industry, with the ultimate aim of facilitating their decision-making in the process of rapidly establishing a competitive regional electricity market in West Africa.

During the study tour, the WAPP and ERERA delegations met with various authorities from agencies of US Energy sector institutions such as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC), to name but one of the 10 agencies met.

Discussions with these agencies were centered on:

• The rules governing the electricity market;
• The various stakeholders and actors of the Electricity Market and their roles;
• Management of the injection of renewable energy into the interconnected grid and the operation of interconnected power systems;
• The contracts that govern the electricity market;
• Electricity exchange mechanisms;
• The organization of control rooms;
• Concepts related to network reliability coordination.

The participants' expressed satisfaction with the impactful study tour that provided good knowledge on best practices in the operation and management of integrated power systems.