Utility Dive
That Dynegy would like to transition out of the MISO market will not come as a surprise to those familiar with the independent power producer.
Company leadership has long been critical of the MISO market structure, which includes both vertically-integrated utilities along with competitive power providers like Dynegy itself. Many of the states in PJM, on the other hand, leave all of the generation business to competitive suppliers while utilities only own the transmission and distribution grids.
“Mixing in those two models creates a real disadvantage for competitive generators,” Dynegy CEO Bob Flexon said at a power generation conference last year. “You either need to be regulated company or an unregulated company. You can’t have a market that starts combining these things.”
Results from recent market auctions in PJM and MISO demonstrate the differences between the markets, Dynegy said in a statement.
“[C]apacity prices … in northern Illinois are nearly three times that of southern Illinois due to less economic plants in the north, while more cost effective plants in southern Illinois sit idle, or shut down, as they don’t receive any compensation to cover operating costs from MISO.”