NAEMA Timeline
NAEMA focuses principally on the electric industry and its members are active throughout North America — including MISO, SPP, NYISO, PJM, IESO, ISO New England, ERCOT, Florida, and the WECC.NAEMA’s roots reach back to the Mid-Continent Area Power Pool (MAPP) Power and Energy Market (PEM), established by MAPP members in 1996. In 2003, the PEM unbundled from MAPP and changed its name to the Mid-Continent Energy Marketers Association (MEMA). In 2011, having significantly outgrown the Mid-Continent area, MEMA changed its name to the North American Energy Markets Association.NAEMA is an independent, nonprofit trade association consisting of entities who market energy or provide services to the energy industry.
Significant events leading to NAEMA
NAEMA and its predecessors Industry and regulatory events
The northeast blackout of 1965 was a significant disruption in the supply of electricity on Tuesday, November 9, 1965, affecting parts of Ontario in Canada and Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and Vermont in the United States.
The North American Electric Reliability Council was established by the electric utility industry to promote the reliability of the bulk power system. It was succeeded in 2006 by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, a nonprofit corporation based in Atlanta, Georgia.
The Mid-Continent Area Power Pool (MAPP) is one of the nine regional reliability councils comprising the North American Electric Reliability Council. The MAPP region covers all of the states of Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, most of South Dakota, and portions of the states of Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Montana and Wisconsin. The Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan are included in the MAPP region as well.
The MAPP Agreement expanded to include Service Schedules (contracts) to facilitate energy transactions between members. The various cost-based Service Schedules were designed for reliability and economics. MAPP members did not charge each other losses or transmission costs at this time — MAPP was a free-wheeling power pool.
For reliability purposes MAPP members agreed to supply each other with “Emergency Energy” when required by the loss of a member’s generating unit. The price for Emergency Energy was set by the power pool each year.
MAPP expands its member communications system and implements an electronic bulletin board whereby members transact energy sales and purchases. The bulletin board was named POET (Program to Optimize Energy Transactions).
The program matched the lowest cost supplier’s incremental cost with the highest cost buyer’s decremental cost. Both costs were added together and divided by two, so the seller would make money and the buyer would save money. POET was used until the MAPP Restated Agreement took effect in November of 1996.
MAPP implements a Loss Repayment Program and begins to charge a fee for losses created by energy transactions flowing through non-participating parties to any and all transactions during a given hour.
The Energy Policy Act, effective October 24, 1992, set goals, created mandates, and amended utility laws to increase clean energy use and improve overall energy efficiency in the United States. The Act consists of twenty-seven titles detailing measures designed to lessen the nation’s dependence on imported energy, provide incentives for clean and renewable energy, and promote energy conservation in buildings.
MAPP implements a regional transmission tariff and begins to charge transmission fees to transacting parties, in response to the Energy Policy Act of 1992.
FERC Order 888 played an instrumental role in opening up the U.S. electricity system to generator competition and wider transmission access. By the mid 1990’s it had become well known that vertically-integrated utilities — the owners of most of the transmission lines in the U.S. — were stifling competition and letting excess grid capacity go unused.
FERC Order 889 went to great lengths to detail exactly how all participants in the electricity market should interact with transmission providers. It laid out the structure and function of what became known as OASIS “nodes” — secure, web-based interfaces to each transmission system’s market offerings and transmission availability announcements. Each OASIS node was to be the single point of information dissemination to the market as well as the customer portal for transmission service requests (TSR), even for affiliated power marketers wanting access to their own parent company’s transmission.
The Open Access Same-Time Information System (OASIS) is an Internet-based system for obtaining services related to electric power transmission in North America. It is the primary means by which high-voltage transmission lines are reserved for moving wholesale quantities of electricity. The OASIS concept was originally conceived with the Energy Policy Act of 1992 and formalized in 1996 through FERC Orders 888 and 889.
MAPP implements the MAPP Restated Agreement, which unbundles the power pool into three functional areas: Regional Transmission Organization (RTO), MAPP Reliability Organization (MRO) and Power and Energy Market (PEM). This unbundling was implemented to comply with FERC Orders 888 and 889.
The PEM is where NAEMA begins.
The Midcontinent Independent System Operator, Inc. (MISO), formerly named Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator, Inc., is an Independent System Operator and Regional Transmission Organization providing open-access transmission service and monitoring the high-voltage transmission system in the Midwest United States, Manitoba, Canada, and a southern United States region which includes much of Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana. MISO also operates one of the world’s largest real-time energy markets.
With de-regulation of the electric energy industry seemingly on the horizon, energy marketing and trading organizations grow sharply over four years.
- Marketing and trading organizations, 1994 10
- Marketing and trading organizations, 1998 450+
MAPP transfers its transmission function (RTO) to MISO. Meanwhile, the Enron debacle shakes up the electric energy industry, and MAPP Power and Energy Market membership drops from over 100 members to fewer than 60.
The MAPP Power and Energy Market (PEM) is further unbundled from MAPP and becomes an independent non-profit organization named the Mid-Continent Energy Marketers Association (MEMA). MAPP continues to provide organizational assistance to MEMA.
MEMA was established to maintain the PEM members’ long-standing marketing and trading relationships, which date back to the early 1970’s. The MEMA Capacity and Energy Tariff, a FERC-approved standard contract, was developed at this time and allowed PEM members to contract for power and energy on a bi-lateral basis, replacing the FERC-approved MAPP Service Schedules. The MEMA tariff became the premier standard contract in the Midwest region. In 2019, NAEMA launched a new Power and Gas Master Agreement as a stand-alone alternative to this tariff.
The Midwest Reliability Organization (MRO) is formed and assumes regional reliability functions.
MEMA fully splits its relationship with MAPP and hires its first full-time Executive Director. The Board of Directors decides to grow the organization and to hold two conferences each year rather than one.
- Market Members 56
- Associated Members 2
- Conferences per year 2
MEMA changes its name to the North American Energy Markets Association (NAEMA) to reflect its significant growth over the previous six years.
Market Members include public or private utilities, energy marketers, power generators, energy transporters, or end-use customers that engage in wholesale energy product transactions. Associated Members include vendors that provide information, software and services to the energy industry.
- Market Members 108
- Associated Members 34
- Conferences held over 15 years 30
NAEMA conducts a Spring and Fall Conference each year.
NAEMA and the International Energy Credit Association (IECA) develop a new master agreement for power and gas transactions: the 2019 Power and Gas Master Agreement. Read the announcement.
Conferences — NAEMA’s core value — were largely paused, with only one held from Fall 2019 through 2021. NAEMA pivoted to virtual presentations and regional receptions.
The Association invested behind the curtain: a new website, online payments, MailChimp, the Green Insider podcast, and a LinkedIn presence. NAEMA also modernized its bylaws, allowing wholesale-like end users to join, permitting two Independent directors to serve, and moving Board of Director elections and Annual Meetings online.
- Members, Spring 2019 140+
- Members, end of 2021 150+
Survived and thrived.
NAEMA returned to hosting Spring and Fall Conferences at great venues in amazing places.
NAEMA added a third event in winter 2023, East Meets West, which NAEMA inherited from member Xcel to keep this industry-loved event alive.
NAEMA reflects its markets. As the North American power grid expands to serve new load, so does the Association.
- Members 240+
- Average annual growth in Members 12%
- Event attendance approaching 400
Managing more than 240 Members and events approaching 400 attendees has resulted in NAEMA deploying a modern Association Management System, replacing the website and membership systems that had served the Association since 2020.
The new system is built to modernize the NAEMA member experience, automate workflows to increase the accuracy of the Association’s work, provide a new foundation for NAEMA’s growth and its Members’ success, and drive toward membership in NAEMA being a strategic advantage for our Members.