The Southeast electricity market is a bilateral market that includes all or parts of Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Missouri and Tennessee. It encompasses all or part of two NERC regions: the Florida Reliability Coordinating Council (FRCC) and the Southeastern Electric Reliability Council (SERC). Utilities in the Southeast are vertically integrated and virtually all the physical sales in the Southeast are done bilaterally. Within the Southeast, the resource mix varies between the NERC subregions. The FRCC relies primarily on natural gas, while the rest of the Southeast has historically primarily utilized coal and nuclear plants. However, natural gas electricity has become more economic in recent years for generation and continued to gain an increasing share of the fuel usage.

The Florida Public Service Commission’s (PSC) competitive bidding rules require investor-owned utilities (IOUs) to issue requests for proposals for any new generating project of 75 MW or greater, exclusive of single-cycle combustion-turbines. The bidding requirement can be waived by the PSC if the IOU can demonstrate that it is not in the best interests of its ratepayers.