Regional entity

A regional entity (RE) in the North American power transmission grid is a regional organization representing all segments of the electric industry: electric utilities (investor-owned, cooperatives, state, regional, and municipal), federal agencies, independent power producers, power market operators, and end-users of the energy.

[4] The regional entities, at the bottom of the structure for the development and enforcement of the reliability standards for the US electric grid, were established by the Section 215 of the Federal Power Act as amended by the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

The statute tried to mimic the balance of power between the federal and state authorities in the US, with REs playing the role of regional (state-like) components.

[5] An RE approves the transmission plans and chooses the projects for regional (as opposed to per-local-pricing-zone) cost allocation.

[8] One of the important roles of an RE is suggesting to NERC (and FERC) to include the facilities into - or exclude from - the list of "elements" that constitute the bulk-power system (BPS, also known as a "bulk electric system", BES), subject to the oversight of the NERC.

The six North American regional entities in 2021. The striped area indicates the regions where the load-serving entities belong to one RE, and the transmission system operator to another. [ 1 ]