The West includes the Northwest Power Pool (NWPP), the Rocky Mountain Power Area (RMPA) and the Arizona, New Mexico, Southern Nevada Power Area (AZ/NM/SNV) within the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC), a regional entity. These areas contain many balancing authorities (BAs) responsible for dispatching generation, procuring power, operating the transmission grid reliably and maintaining adequate reserves. Although the BAs operate autonomously, some have joint transmission-planning and reserve-sharing agreements.

The NWPP is composed of all or major portions of the states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Nevada and Utah, a small portion of Northern California and the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Alberta. This vast area covers 1.2 million square miles. It is made up of 20 BAs. The peak demand is 54.5 GW in summer and 63 GW in winter. There are 80 GW of generation capacity, including 43 GW of hydroelectric generation.