Southwest Power Pool
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The Southwest Power Pool (SPP) is the oldest North American reliability organization still in operation, having originally formed in 1941 when eleven power companies cooperated to ensure that an aluminum factory would receive reliable power as it worked to assist the US war effort for World War 2. SPP incorporated as a nonprofit in 1994, and was approved as a Regional Transmission Operator (RTO) by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in 2004. SPP is one of nine regional electric reliability councils under North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) authority. NERC and the regional reliability councils were formed following the Northeast Blackout of 1965. SPP's offices are located in Little Rock, Arkansas.
The SPP region lies within the Eastern Interconnection, in the central Southern United States, serving all of the State of Kansas, and portions of New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana. SPP members include investor-owned utilities, municipal systems, generation and transmission cooperatives, state authorities, independent power producers, and power marketers. SPP has two of the six high voltage direct current (DC) ties which connect the Eastern interconnection to the Western Interconnection and both of the DC ties to the Texas Interconnection.
